Apparatus
by Drewsramblings
Summary: The Brotherhood has a new member, one who will allow Magneto to rebuild his machine and set it in motion again, but he might have turned the power up a little too high. (Instead of X2)
1. The Apparatus

I like to write with original characters. This is probably my least OC- based fic (I've written several, even though this is only my second on the site) and so I thought it would be a good one to include, but it's a little out there. I decided to add "Horror" as the secondary genre after writing chapter 2.  
  
If you think I own any of the characters in chapter 1 (besides maybe Jen) you've been under a rock or something.  
................................................  
  
"Sir!" yelled Toad as he ran inside. Magneto couldn't imagine anything that could explain his unaccustomed energy. "I found her! Ha! I did it; found her!"  
  
Magneto frowned. "This is no time for stories of your love life."  
  
"Not HER. Unfortunately. No, I found a replacement for the girl!"  
  
This caught Magneto's attention sharply, though the only outward sign of this was that his eyes narrowed a bit. "Are you sure?"  
  
"Completely. I saw her do it!"  
  
"This replacement...absorbs powers?"  
  
"No. I'm sorry, but it will have to be you to die. Maybe more than once."  
  
Magneto was growing impatient with Toad's riddles. "What is her power?"  
  
"She's a duplicator. She duplicates things; objects, herself, others. You see! She can create a dozen of you and two or three of you can power the Apparatus and cover the city, leaving nine or ten."  
  
"You have seen her duplicate others?"  
  
Toad grinned wide. He turned to the door and whistled. A man who looked very much like Toad hopped in, followed by another. "Sir," said the first, then the second.  
  
After a few seconds the corners of Magneto's lips turned up. Soon he was grinning almost as broadly as Toad had been when he entered. "Very good, Toad. Thank you."  
  
................................................  
  
It had been in Philadelphia. Toad had been milling about, waiting for Mystique to finish up a meeting with an informant, when he had met her. It hadn't been a very nice neighborhood, so when he noticed a pretty white girl walking alone he became suspicious. She looked about thirteen. He was already trussed up like a spy in his trench coat and hat, so he decided to follow her. She was wandering, seemingly lost. She was walking past a little dingy electronics shop when she stopped dead and stared at the window. Toad got closer and saw what it was that had meant so much to her: it was a sign that read "No Mutants Allowed!" Toad smiled.  
  
"There's no way for them to know," he said, walking up to her.  
  
She startled and almost ran.  
  
"It's all right, dear. I wasn't attacking you. Merely pointing out that they can't know unless you're obvious about it. They only put up the sign because they think it will help their business."  
  
The girl stared at him. It was obvious she was trying to see his face under his hat. "Does it?" she asked finally.  
  
"Probably. They all hate mutants in this area."  
  
The girl looked worried. "Can you tell me how to get out of this area?"  
  
"Well that's simple. Choose a street and follow it until you find yourself in a different neighborhood."  
  
"I've been walking along here since last night."  
  
"Really?" Toad realized that despite her looks she must be powerful. She hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of walking the streets all night without getting picked up.  
  
The girl's eyes opened wide in embarrassment. She hadn't meant to reveal that she was alone and without anywhere to go.  
  
She was certainly interesting. The last thing Magneto would want would be to take in a stray, of course, but there was no way he could leave without satisfying his curiosity about her power. That and maybe she would provide some entertainment while he waited for Mystique.  
  
"Where are your parents, then?"  
  
"New Hampshire."  
  
"You're a long way from home, then."  
  
"I'm visiting my aunt and uncle. I missed a bus and now I'm trying to get back to them."  
  
"I have a car. Where do they live?"  
  
She was far too slow to respond. "25 Hummingbird Road."  
  
"That's nowhere I've ever heard of."  
  
She stuck her chin out at him. "But you're not from around here."  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"You can't be. Besides, you have an accent."  
  
"Just because I have an accent doesn't mean I can't live around here. Go down to Thoreau Avenue and tell me whether they have accents."  
  
"I have to go now."  
  
"You're not going to walk all night again, are you?"  
  
"So what if I do? I can take care of myself."  
  
"I don't doubt it. So can I."  
  
She looked at him strangely. "What...what do you do?"  
  
"You really want to know?"  
  
The girl looked very curious. Curiosity killed the cat. "Please."  
  
Toad smiled. He looked up and saw a fire escape that made a good target. He checked for witnesses then grabbed it with his tongue and pulled himself up to it. "That is what I do," he called down to her.  
  
Her eyes were comically large.  
  
"And you?"  
  
She didn't move for long enough that Toad thought she wasn't going to. Finally she pulled something out of her pocket with a flair. It was a knife. Toad was about to ask whether that was all when he saw clearly that it was not. She put her other hand to the knife and when it came away there was another, identical knife in it. She did a funny movement and there were two knives in both hands. She looked like a magician revealing card after card from his hand. She did it again and suddenly she was holding eight knives, four in either hand. She turned toward him, cocked her arms, and threw the knives. Toad leapt and landed on the ground near her. He looked at where he had been and there he saw that all eight knives had crashed against the fire escape. At least a couple of them would surely have hit him.  
  
"That's it?"  
  
"It's enough."  
  
"Didn't you lose the knife?"  
  
In response she pulled another identical knife from her pocket.  
  
"Do you at least know how to throw a knife?"  
  
"I taught myself."  
  
"Let's see, then."  
  
"Where?"  
  
"At me."  
  
She gladly complied. A little too gladly, maybe. Toad had just enough time to wrap his tongue around it. He held it up to look at how it would have struck him. It was off; it would have hit sideways instead of blade- forward.  
  
"I see. Let me teach you."  
  
By the time Mystique had come looking for him he knew a rough story of the girl's life. Her name was Jennifer Carmazzi. She was from Highmont, New Hampshire. Soon after her thirteenth birthday she had accidentally duplicated herself at school. She tried to keep going to school but three weeks later some boys tried to beat her up and she duplicated herself so many times that she was able to beat them off. She ran away. She made it to Philadelphia about a month later. She discovered that she could duplicate objects and other people, but she didn't like duplicating herself; she had watched herself get hit by a car while running across the freeway and had been afraid ever since.  
  
Just then Toad saw a middle-aged man he knew to be Mystique walk up, so he decided he had better hurry up and convince the girl to come with them. "You know what that means, right?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"The coppers have to have identified your body."  
  
The man looked at him strangely, but the girl's expression registered nothing less than horror. "My parents, my friends...they think I'm dead."  
  
"Well, you are..."  
  
"What the hell is this?" asked the man.  
  
Toad merely smiled. "Jen, dear, would you like to come with us? Nowhere to go, no one to see."  
  
Jen started to cry. She nodded.  
  
Toad glanced sideways at the middle-aged man.  
  
................................................  
  
Jen found that she had little trouble living with the Brotherhood. At first she had found it uncomfortable that there was metal everywhere; it reminded her of a prison. She had also found it a little hard to get used to Magneto and Mystique and she was downright scared of Sabretooth. Still, it wasn't so bad. She surprised herself with how fast she adapted to living with Magneto and Mystique and even Sabretooth didn't seem so awful. He liked to play the role of the big, dumb brute, she found. If you challenged that, though, and didn't talk down to him or act threatened by him, he toned it down. He really wasn't as stupid as he pretended to be. She wondered whether Magneto knew that. And as for Toad, she liked him a lot. He seemed like the big brother she wished she had had instead of a big sister.  
  
"So, when do I get my codename?"  
  
"I thought we discussed this," responded Toad in mock exasperation, "Nobody knows about you. If we were to name you they would just find out about you."  
  
"But if we only used it here."  
  
"Fine. To me you'll be Duplicator. How's that?"  
  
"Mortimer!"  
  
"Damn that woman. I know I never told you that name."  
  
"It was Victor, actually."  
  
"I'll make sure to break his nose the next time I see him."  
  
"I don't think he'd mind much; he DOES have a healing factor."  
  
"Maybe I'll break it so bad it won't heal."  
  
"I bet you can't."  
  
"I'll take that bet. A month of kitchen detail, then?"  
  
"You're on!"  
  
................................................  
  
There was no reason Jen could see not to create a few copies of her hosts. Toad had had little trouble with his first two copies, less trouble than she had ever seen a person have before. She herself had stumbled around the first several times she had split. In any case Toad didn't have that trouble and she created three more copies of him. That was a little too much for him, though, and he spent the rest of the day on his back, trying to get used to seeing out of six pairs of ears, feeling with twelve different hands.  
  
Mystique had even less trouble than Toad did. Jen created three copies of her at first and she had them under control in minutes, so Jen created three more. Upon insistence she made three more for a grand total of ten versions, but at that point she stood up to the larger woman and absolutely refused to make any more. Jen spent the entire day dreading that Mystique would suddenly become overwhelmed and pass out from having so many bodies at once, but she never did. She was so amazed that she promised that night that she would eventually create the ten additional copies the woman asked for.  
  
Magneto, to his obvious embarrassment, didn't do nearly as well with his copies. After only one he became unbalanced enough that she stopped, fearful that he would pass out. He insisted that she make another and she complied, but her hand never left his side, ready at any time to draw his selves back together. With that he didn't insist that she make more immediately. She made one more copy that night and two more the next day, and it was two days before he was fully recovered and using all of his selves efficiently.  
  
When she got around to Sabretooth she was very cautious. She made one copy quickly, then stood back to see how he would react to it. As she feared, he didn't react well. Both of him started to sway like he was drunk. He let out a yell and began to swing out both sets of arms, probably to steady himself. The result, however, was that of a gigantic blender; if Jen had been hit with any one of those arms she would have been severely injured at the least. She backed off quickly, and left the room entirely when one of the Sabretooths hit a wall and dented it. She decided that two was enough, and he didn't disagree with her.  
  
The island base of the Brotherhood had never been busier. Even though most of the Mystiques and at least a couple of Magnetos and Toads were away at all times there were a lot of people around. Every day Toad and Mystique would mention some great success they had managed to achieve because of the duplicates.  
  
She had been with the Brotherhood for a month when Magneto told them that the new Apparatus was complete and shortly they could mutate an entire city. They decided that New York would still be an important target, despite the fact that all of the world leaders were no longer gathered there. They would also target Washington D.C. and other key cities. There was only one Apparatus, of course, but Magneto fully intended to move it from one location to the next without anyone putting up effective opposition. Charles' students would be nothing, of course; they could hardly manage one version of the Brotherhood. The government would be more of a problem but still a problem they could overcome. Magneto had certainly escaped from their prison easily enough.  
  
It was the most amazing thing Jen had ever seen. They had put the Apparatus in the basement of a building and Magneto had powered it up. It had spilled out a great wave of this white heat. It had reminded Jen of a sauna.  
  
The X-Men showed up, just as Magneto expected they would, but they likewise couldn't stop the Brotherhood. Cyclops attempted to knock out the machine, only to find himself faced with a Jean Grey on both sides. Both were Mystique, but he didn't know this. One of them proved she was false and Cyclops went to the other, who took his visor. Two Toads and a Sabretooth managed the real Jean Grey and Storm. Wolverine spent the entire battle pinned to a wall by a Magneto.  
  
When the first Magneto died another took his place, and they laid the corpse out on the ground next to the Apparatus for the authorities to find later. Jen had objected to this, but Magneto himself insisted. It was quite an advantage for one such as himself, he argued, to have the authorities believing he was dead, even if Charles and his students knew the truth.  
  
Both Jen and Toad wanted to remain at the base to watch the scene unfold on television, but Magneto argued that they would be better to continue immediately. It would be some time before the effects would be visible on any kind of large scale, and they were in a position to cover several cities before anyone besides the X-Men were even aware of exactly what was happening.  
  
They covered Washington D.C. almost without incident, though this time they took Magneto's corpse back to base with them. Charles came, with Cyclops, but they came only to talk. One of the Magnetos stayed behind to talk as the rest returned. He wasn't about to let Jen speak to Charles or even get near him.  
  
"This was a grave mistake, Erik, the worst you have made."  
  
"I disagree, my dear Charles. They will no longer be able to ignore us, to enforce their policies upon us without any interference. Many of the policy- makers are themselves our brothers and sisters now." He had specifically waited for an important Congressional session in which almost all of the key Senators and Representatives would be present. "Perhaps more importantly we can have our own sanctuaries now, much larger ones than your little school and my island."  
  
"It's not that simple!" argued Cyclops.  
  
Charles continued. "I am surprised at your naïveté, old friend. Do you believe that these people will turn around and form a happy mutant society, with you as their elected leader?"  
  
"They need not thank me, Charles, but they will adapt. They will not continue this vein of anti-mutant legislation."  
  
"They will die! Senator Kelly died, Erik."  
  
"I believed we have already discussed this. Is that not correct, Cyclops?"  
  
"You claimed he was not really dead."  
  
"We shall see in a mere matter of days whether or not the process is deadly."  
  
"At that point you will see the severity of the error you have committed."  
  
"Do you intend to continue to oppose me?"  
  
"How can I not?"  
  
"That, old friend, is the tragedy. We no longer have any reason to be enemies and yet you insist. Please do not make me kill you or your students; I would regret it terribly."  
  
"At the least let the girl go, Erik."  
  
"Ah, so you do know of our delightful little friend. She is free to leave at any time; she is familiar with my beliefs and does not object to them."  
  
"She is a child. She can not be expected to understand the reality of murder, least of all on this scale."  
  
"I apologize, Charles, but I must be going. I enjoyed our discussion."  
  
................................................  
  
That afternoon at about 1:30 they were gratified to find that they were on the news. Jen had spent the entire time since they had come back from D.C. waiting, hoping for news, and Toad had kept a duplicate waiting with her. When the news they were waiting for finally came on all of the Toads dropped what they were doing and came to watch. Two Mystiques and a Magneto came also.  
  
"We apologize for the delay in your regularly scheduled programming, but we have breaking news," the anchorwoman said, "There appear to have been terrorist attacks on both New York City and Washington D.C. The details are not yet clear but some kind of energy wave engulfed New York yesterday and Washington this morning, which authorities say may be some kind of biological weapon. Immediately after the wave there were reports citywide of heart attacks, strokes, and other medical problems, including many very unusual ones."  
  
Toad laughed. "Very unusual! I hope our dear President McKenna suffered a very unusual medical problem!"  
  
The sentiment was echoed by Jen and even Mystique seemed visibly pleased. Only Magneto still looked serious.  
  
"What is it?" asked Mystique.  
  
"Medical problems, whether they are unusual or not, are not what I had in mind."  
  
"I should activate the catalysts?"  
  
Magneto looked at her thoughtfully. "Yes. The catalysts should do the trick."  
  
One of the Mystiques stood up without another word and walked out.  
  
Never one to let her curiosity go unsatisfied, Jen turned to Magneto. "What is she doing? What's a catalyst?"  
  
It was a Toad, not Magneto, who responded. "It's something that speeds up a change. It sounds to me that Mystique has set up a nice little fireworks show to celebrate our accomplishment."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Trauma is what causes mutants to manifest. We want our new brothers and sisters to manifest, so..." He trailed off.  
  
"Fireworks?"  
  
"Bombs, dear, explosives. I know Mystique; when she wants to be noticed she's quite effective." Toad, all six of him, glanced sidelong at the sole remaining Mystique.  
  
"Bombs? She's not killing people, is she?" She regretted it as soon as it was out; Magneto had told her several times that the only way mutants would have peace is if normal humans were moved out of the way. Then again, why use the Apparatus if they were just going to kill them all?  
  
"Worry not," said Magneto in the compassionate voice she had only ever heard him use two or three times and only ever toward her, "we are minimizing the number of deaths necessary by using the Apparatus. No more people will die than is completely necessary."  
  
That made Jen feel better. She couldn't help but notice that he didn't promise that no one would die - just the opposite, in fact - but then she remembered the three Magnetos who had died in order to operate the Apparatus. This wasn't a game, and some people had to die. It was for the best.  
  
She had only just turned her attention back to the television when the remaining Mystique spoke up. "It's done."  
  
"That was fast," commented Toad.  
  
"I'm not wasting all of my duplicates sitting in front of a television."  
  
Toad smiled. "I'm not as skilled as you are at doing a dozen different things at once."  
  
"Fifteen, actually."  
  
"Mystique," said Magneto warningly.  
  
"How long until the fireworks begin?" asked Toad.  
  
"They are beginning now."  
  
"Very good," said Magneto.  
  
"How long until people start to change?" asked Jen.  
  
Magneto answered instead of Mystique. "They have already begun, and the changes should be largely complete by tomorrow. The next time we will be on the news, which is, I assume, what you are truly asking about, will be to report the catalysts, and perhaps to follow up with the changes undergone by those involved. We shall see whether by tonight these humans do not understand what awaits them." 


	2. The Blasted

You might notice this, but this is not a direct continuation from the first chapter. Still, I promise it has something to do with the storyline.  
  
I'm back to original characters. (I do own these characters, ha ha!)  
  
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Fred Small did not live up to his name. That was why he was so scared when he was thrown through the glass wall next to him. He had been walking along, whistling to himself, when the whole building had rocked so hard he had crashed through the glass. He stood up slowly, and when he was on his feet the sprinklers started to go off. That scared him again. There were no earthquakes in New York, but there WERE terrorist attacks.  
  
He ran for the stairs. Pain shot through his left arm and the side of his head, but he didn't have time to worry about that. As he ran he glanced right and saw Pam, a nice girl he didn't see often enough in the course of his job, scooping things up off of her desk.  
  
"Forget that, idiot! That was an explosion!" He didn't stop long enough to see whether she would actually pay attention to him. He also saw others, many of whom he knew but also many of whom he didn't. Almost all were making for the staircase, just like him. One woman, though, was on her knees on the ground. Without stopping to think about it, Fred lifted her up by the arms and put her on her feet. As he did he felt a sharp pain in his right hand, one that had nothing to do with being thrown through a glass wall. He took a step back and looked at the woman, who was sobbing and waving her hands around. He noticed what looked like blood on the tips of her fingers, so he caught one of her hands. It was horrible; something had stripped away all of the skin off of the ends of all of her fingers. He saw pearly white bone sticking out. Sharp pearly white bone. He put one of his fingertips to one of hers, and felt a prick of pain. Her bones were sharp enough to cut flesh. Just then he felt another stab of pain in his left arm. She had grabbed onto to him with her free hand. He let out a yell and knocked her hand away then held onto her wrist, such that he had control of both of her arms.  
  
"We have to get out of here," he said, dragging her along.  
  
The woman screamed. It was a scream of pain.  
  
Even so he didn't let go or even loosen his grip. He wanted to help, but not if she was going to cut him up.  
  
Just as he was taking the first step down the stairs the building shook again, though luckily Fred was able to fall sideways against the way instead of down the stairs. Others were not so lucky, and he heard more than one scream of terror or yell of pain. He jumped up, still aware of the woman's hands, and started down the stairs.  
  
When they got to the first landing and rounded the corner to start the next set of stairs the woman let out another cry of pain. "My hands!"  
  
As they stepped down onto the first stair of the second set he held up one of her hands again. There was even more bone visible now. It was almost as if the bones themselves were cutting away the surrounding muscle and flesh.  
  
There were no more blasts, but that didn't stop Fred and everyone else from making it to the bottom as fast as they could. As they shoved their way to the front doors and safety Fred started to feel like there was something wrong, something just out of the range of his senses. Seconds after he had the thought he realized his head hurt. It was a kind of an all-around throbbing, as if someone had put a bucket over his head and hit it with a hammer. Then it got worse. Screams became more common all over the lobby area, and Fred felt like he was going to vomit. The woman in Fred's arms let out one last shriek and fell unconscious. He was having trouble walking straight, and all around him he could see people falling over. But he continued to push through, and it was then, when he was most of the way to the door, that he remembered the wave of white energy from the day before. At the time he had wondered whether it was something wrong with the building. Now he wondered what it had done to cause all of what he was seeing now.  
  
When he finally fought his way outside he was so shocked that he could hardly keep his feet. There were people everywhere, not all of them on their feet or even whole. There was also debris everywhere. So it had been a bomb after all. He looked up at the side of his building and found that there was a large chunk of it missing, and at about his level at that, although on the opposite side of the building from his own office.  
  
A man with a gaping wound in his chest ran past Fred. "How? How? How?" he scream-chanted, loud enough to hurt Fred's ears.  
  
On the bright side, his head didn't ache anymore. Maybe it was something about being out of the building; he would have thought it was the fresh air if the air hadn't been a brown sludge of particles from the explosion.  
  
Still, his lack of headache didn't make the woman he was carrying any lighter. He saw a row of parked card across the street and lurched toward them, thinking he could make it over and put the woman down on top of one of them before his strength gave out entirely.  
  
He was right, barely, but that didn't mean that everything went as planned. As soon as he plopped her ungracefully onto the hood of a nice family-sized car he heard a kind of fearful intake of breath and felt pain shoot through his stomach region at the same time. She had woken up when he had put her down, and now her arm bone was lodged in his stomach. He gasped in pain. There was actually a bone extending six or seven inches out of her elbow and into his stomach. It couldn't have been true; there was no way it was even possible.  
  
He reached down, grasped the bone, and pulled. It came free with a twinge of pain that couldn't possibly have been fake.  
  
The woman shrieked again and Fred watched as the bone shrunk visibly back up into her elbow. Within three seconds there was nothing there at all; the extra bone had vanished.  
  
Fred lurched backwards, clutching his wound. It made hadn't made any sense before, and now it was just too much. He overloaded. He tripped and fell over backwards, and his large body made a nice loud thump on the pavement.  
  
................................................  
  
When Maria finally woke up she blinked once or twice, remembered what had happened, and jumped up. She looked around and was horrified to find no less than three bodies on the ground around her. She squirmed around them carefully and ran away. She rounded the corner and found herself on a busy street packed with cars. Many of them were honking.  
  
Where was she supposed to go now? Where could she go where she wouldn't touch anyone?  
  
"¿Qué haces?" yelled someone behind her. She knew - she could tell - that he was directing the question at her and no one else. "¡Nos atacan!"  
  
She whirled around and saw a young guy staring at her intently. Scared, she backed away from him. It didn't help that at the moment she couldn't remember how to speak Spanish, even though she could understand it.  
  
He leapt at her. "¡Dije que están atacándonos!"  
  
"¡No, por favor!" She tried to fend him off, but it was no use. He put his hand on her arm and it was over even before she could close her eyes. It was like his entirely body poured out through his hand, into her arm. He slumped over. His clear brown eyes were open but they had no signs of life in them. She screamed, fell over backwards, scrambled to her feet, and ran again. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't forget the images of his dead, open eyes.  
  
Several times she came close enough to someone that she panicked. She was quickly tiring herself out, but there was little she could do about it; how was she supposed to stay away from everyone?  
  
As she continued her pace started to slack, and finally she calmed down just enough to start to think rationally about what she should do. Could she go to the hospital? Or least call 911? Would they have any idea what to do about her? Maybe they would at least know where she could go so she could avoid touching anyone.  
  
Now all she needed was to use a telephone. She kept jogging, if not really running, and when she rounded the next corner she saw it her opportunity.  
  
It was a car crash, one where it didn't look like anyone was too hurt but they weren't about to drive away either. The driver from one of the cars was sitting on his hood talking into a cell phone, while the other driver was lurching around as if drunk. As long as she could get the one with the phone to give it to her without either of them touching her she would be fine.  
  
"Please, sir," she said as she approached the man with the phone ever-so- cautiously. He didn't say anything or even look at her, so she tried again. "Sir, if you're on 911 I need to talk to them!"  
  
That got his attention. He locked onto her with his eyes and stopped talking into the phone.  
  
"Sir, something horrible has happened to me. My...body." A tear leaked out, followed by another. It had been one thing to live through it, to kill all those people, but to acknowledge it by saying it out loud? She couldn't bring herself to do it.  
  
The man blinked once or twice, frowned, and took his phone away from his ear. He pressed a button, followed by four more, then extended his hand and the phone in it to her.  
  
"Please. I can't touch you."  
  
The man looked at her with suspicion.  
  
"Just please put it on the ground."  
  
Without taking his eyes off of her he slid off of his car, placed the phone on the ground, and took a couple of steps backward.  
  
She moved forward, picked up the phone, and backed off as fast as she could.  
  
"Hello?" said a woman on the other end. She sounded frantic.  
  
"Hello. Please, you have to help..."  
  
"You'll have to hold. I'm sorry." She heard a beep and the line went silent.  
  
Maria held out the phone and stared at it. The 911 operators were making people hold? Without even asking if it was an emergency first? There was no way that was a good thing.  
  
"Well?" asked the owner of the phone.  
  
"I'm on hold."  
  
The man was as shocked as she was.  
  
"Don't you know," said the other man, the one who looked drunk, "we're all going to die."  
  
Both Maria and the phone man stared at him.  
  
"I just heard it on the radio! Biological weapons! Turns out that energy wave yesterday wasn't quite as harmless as you said, Lauren Honey!" He gave a high-pitched, insane-sounding laugh.  
  
Phone Man glanced questioningly at Maria, who felt obliged to say, "Don't ask me!"  
  
"Hello?" came the voice of the 911 operator again.  
  
"Hello, I..."  
  
"Is this an emergency?"  
  
"Yes! I...I've already injured several people. Whenever I touch someone...they are seriously injured."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"Ever since the energy wave yesterday. Someone would touch me and it's like all of their energy would pour out into me. I don't want it to happen to anyone else!"  
  
"This...Are you serious?"  
  
A sob burst out. "Yes." Another sob came, and she held her breath to stop the rest.  
  
"Ma'am, I...You'll have to stay away from other people."  
  
"I know, but how?"  
  
"I'm sorry." The phone line went silent again, and this time she wasn't just on hold.  
  
When she looked back at Phone Man, thinking of thanking him, he was staring at her with wide eyes.  
  
"You what? When you touch people?"  
  
Maria knew it was time for her to leave. She placed the phone on the ground and started to back away. "Sorry."  
  
"What's the point?" asked the other man, the insane man, startlingly close to her. She jumped away from him then he spoke again. "Where are you going to go? You might as well stay here, since we're all dead already."  
  
"Please," she begged, putting out a hand toward him in warning, "please don't come any closer."  
  
"Biological weapons!" was the man's response.  
  
She turned and ran. It was only once she had put three or four blocks behind her that she was sure that he hadn't followed her, that she hadn't killed him.  
  
Even so her problems were far from over. What she needed was to find somewhere she could stay, somewhere no one else would go, where she could sleep without having to wake up to a pile of bodies. Where was that?  
  
An hour later she was about ready to give up her search. Still, she had to have something, some way to warn people not to touch her. She found a dumpster, opened it up, and poked through it until she found a suitable piece of paper. She was a little less sure what to do about a writing utensil, but she realized that she had to do something, so she turned back to the dumpster. After ten minutes or so she came upon a pen with ink leaking out of one end. She wouldn't be able to use it like a normal pen without getting ink all over herself, but if she were to turn it around she could use it almost like a quill pen. She put the paper down and started to write. It was a little harder than she thought it would be to use the leaking ink, but she managed well enough. When she was finished it said, "Caution. Don't touch me. Cuidado. No tocarme." At least now if she did fall asleep like last time people would be able to tell not to touch her.  
  
She got to her feet one more time and started walking, but this time she wouldn't have been able to run even if someone had been about to touch her. Her feet were dragging, and she could feel her eyelids starting to droop. Still, she had to keep going. Her mind started to wander. How had she ended up like that? How was any of it possible? More importantly, why did it have to happen to her? She sighed. Maybe it was all a bad dream, and she would wake up soon. Just as long as there weren't any dead bodies around.  
  
................................................  
  
After the white energy wave had swept through the office and swept over them Kevin had seriously considered not coming into work the next day. But, he had reasoned, if anyone came to work under those circumstances it would be the man in charge of editing MSNBC's news footage. How else would the public know what had happened?  
  
When he had arrived that morning he had seriously regretted his decision. They suspected biological terrorism, he had been informed. He had turned around and had started to walk straight out the door. Unfortunately, Bob himself had walked out and stopped everyone. They had a job to do, he had said. It was their responsibility to the public, he had said. Besides, the energy wave had already passed; what would going do to help it? Kevin had pointed out that at least he would have been able to spend his last day or two with his wife. But it was no use; when Bob told them to stay, they would stay.  
  
That was why it really wasn't that terrible of a shock when Kevin found himself blown through a window and out into the open air by the bomb blast.  
  
The fall was relatively peaceful. An image of his wife Angela bubbled up in his mind and he felt a strange kind of almost detached regret. His fate had been sealed the moment he had decided to leave for work that morning.  
  
After an unbelievably long time he had to wonder why he was still conscious. It wasn't that far-fetched for him to have survived the blast and being thrown through the window, but shouldn't the fall itself at least have knocked him unconscious? He only had just enough time to fear that he would actually feel his body being crushed before he landed.  
  
He didn't know what to think. He had landed, right? He certainly wasn't still falling. So why wasn't he dead? Or was he? He tried to open his eyes, but they stung too badly. Presumably that meant he wasn't dead. Could it somehow be that he had not only survived but had stayed conscious, and he couldn't feel any pain in his body because he had been paralyzed? He experimentally wiggled one foot, and found that there was nothing wrong with it. He was out of ideas. There was just no explanation. Determined to find some sort of answer, he tried opening his eyes again. They stung again but he blinked them rapidly and wiped them out with his hands and it improved. It was only the dust he had kicked up during his landing. He blinked several more times and opened them again, just in time to see something large and metallic flying straight for him. He had no time to do anything but gasp and close his eyes again before it hit him. He felt something on his chest and neck, but it certainly didn't hurt. He opened his eyes once again and found that a large shard of metal was lying on top of him. It was wickedly sharp, but it was also bent and thankfully the point was not toward him.  
  
He grabbed the shard of metal and stood up, and when he did he was absolutely shocked to find what he did: his clothes were almost shredded, especially the back. As he looked at them he realized that the only way they would be that damaged was if everything he had thought happened had really happened. He HAD fallen thirteen stories. He HAD been hit by a large piece of shrapnel from the blast, judging by the large chunk of material missing from the front of his shirt. He looked up at his building, and saw a crater in the side of it. The center of it was his office, he estimated.  
  
"Mister?" asked someone behind him. It was a teenage girl.  
  
"Hi."  
  
"Uh, are you okay?"  
  
"Well, I'm Superman. So yes, I guess I am."  
  
She blinked at him, confused.  
  
"Don't worry; I'm as confused as you are." He paused. "If it makes you feel any better I apparently only have the bullets-bouncing-off-me part, though, and not the flying, laser eyes, and all the rest."  
  
Now she was suspicious.  
  
"Thanks for asking, but I'm fine."  
  
She backed away from him, her eyes never leaving him.  
  
"Oh, one thing: do you have a cell? Mine's up there." He pointed at the crater.  
  
She looked at him without answering for a few seconds, then reached into her bag and pulled out a tiny little pink cell phone. She dropped it into his hand as if she was afraid of touching him. And when he thought about it he didn't blame her; who knew what his Superman skin would do hers? He took the phone, dialed Angela's work number, and held it to his ear.  
  
Something about holding it there just made him laugh. Some Superman, using a miniature pink cell phone.  
  
"Hello, this is Angela McBale speaking."  
  
"Hey, Honey," he said. His voice sounded thin, as if he were exhausted. Which wouldn't be that hard to believe, considering.  
  
"Kevin! What is going on? What's wrong?"  
  
"Where should I begin?"  
  
"What is it? Tell me!"  
  
"That energy wave yesterday? It was a biological weapon, they're saying. And..." He stopped. Suddenly he put it together. They were hit with a biological weapon, and now suddenly he was Superman. That wouldn't make any sense, unless the changes were less specific than that. "Honey, whether it was a biological weapon or some kind of radiation I don't know, but either way it turns people into mutants."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I...I don't know how to tell you this but I've become a...a mutant. I'm a mutant."  
  
He could hear her crying. "Wh...what? What do you mean?"  
  
"I just survived a 13-story fall. I didn't even get hurt. Not a scratch."  
  
"Thirteen stories?"  
  
"There was a bomb. It was a follow-up to the real attack yesterday." He had no way of knowing that, but it made perfect sense. And whoever the terrorists were they had to be after publicity, right? And in that case wouldn't they target the news networks, just to get attention?  
  
"A bomb? Oh my god! Are you...is everyone else okay?"  
  
Kevin sighed. He hadn't put much thought into it, and the reason was clear. Everyone else was NOT okay. Most likely everyone from Bob to the temps was now flying with the angels. It was a bad day to have been a temp.  
  
Of course there was always hope. He had survived; why couldn't a few of the others have survived also? Just because his kind of invincibility wasn't even common enough to have appeared on the supposedly exhaustive list of mutations he had studied four or five months before; that didn't mean it was impossible.  
  
"Oh, Sweetie," said Angela. She knew what his silence meant. "What now?"  
  
The question caught him entirely off guard. He really hadn't thought about the future at all. What would happen? They wouldn't exactly be able to continue as if nothing had happened, especially not if everyone was suddenly going to turn into a mutant. Who knew what was happening? "We have to get out of New York. We have to get far away. Don't even bother to tell your boss. Just leave. We have to get out of here."  
  
"What about everyone else? If that wave was a biological weapon won't we be spreading it?"  
  
"I don't think we will." Actually, that was a flat lie. He didn't see any reason to believe that they wouldn't spread it. But he didn't care. They had to get out.  
  
He hit the end button without bothering to say goodbye. There wasn't time for that kind of thing anymore. He handed the phone back to the girl, whose eyes were so wide they had to have been drying out.  
  
"Thanks. And if I were you, I would get out of here also." 


	3. The Traitors

Back to borrowed characters  
................................................  
  
Jen was sitting at home with one Toad, and she was not happy about it. All the others were out turning Philadelphia into a city of mutants and she didn't get to go because Magneto had been afraid that the X-Men would kidnap her.  
  
"What's happening now?" she asked.  
  
"The Apparatus is still running. There's nothing stopping us. Nothing has changed." Toad was starting to get exasperated. "If something changes I promise I'll tell you."  
  
She crossed her arms and frowned. Why was it only her who wasn't allowed to go? Magneto had gone, and that was after she had made two more copies of him! He was far more likely to have a problem than she was. Still, she knew not to argue the point with him. She had been thrown in the cell once, and she had been careful not to upset him ever since.  
  
All she could do was remember back to the second news story, back to all the chaos and confusion. She hadn't liked looking at the images of the injuries people had suffered, but Magneto had reminded her that it was only humans who had gotten injured, humans who, like the boys back at school, would have liked nothing better than to injure or kill HER. And the fact was that the rest of it, the confusion and sounds of worry, all of that made her excited. She had at least partially caused all of that to happen. She had made it possible to turn three cities of people into mutants like her. She had helped make history. She couldn't help but be proud of that.  
  
"There," said Toad, "it's off. He's dead."  
  
"Is another one going to go in also?"  
  
"Not necessary. We're packing up now."  
  
"Okay. Is he still doing okay? I only just made those copies and now one of him is dead and he isn't that young anymore..." She couldn't help but remember the time one of her had died. It was by far the worst experience of her life. Feeling the car throw her off her feet even as her legs broke, feeling her face hit the windshield...She hadn't even been able to look at cars for a week or two after that. And considering that Magneto had now had four copies die...  
  
"He says he's fine, but you never know with that old bugger."  
  
"We're not doing it again for a little while, right?"  
  
"Maybe yes, maybe no. Right now we're deciding on our next target. A right big city like Chicago would be nice but it won't be a skip through the park to get the Apparatus there. Since we've got it in Jersey now it's tempting to keep it around there."  
  
"Well I think we should stop for now anyway. What if the next time he can't take it? What if all of him dies?"  
  
"There are some people who would argue that's a good thing." Toad was staring off into space, thinking.  
  
"What? Are you talking about the X-Men?"  
  
"No. They would think it was a good thing if he suddenly turned around and decided to allow the humans to walk all over us. No, I was thinking of a certain soldier man who's been rattling the cage for more protection against mutants."  
  
"What does that mean?"  
  
"It means he might just decide where we bring it next. If he goes to Baltimore maybe Baltimore will find itself with a few more mutants than it had before. It's just too bad he stays away from cities so often."  
  
Jen didn't know what to say to that. She didn't think they were afraid of any one human; why would they put that much effort into changing this man? Besides, they had changed only one human before. "What about Senator Kelly? Couldn't you just grab this guy liked you grabbed him?"  
  
"Senator Kelly didn't have an entourage specifically trained to hunt down and kill mutants. But it's still a possibility. We've been working on it. We'll continue to work on it."  
  
Jen sighed. "So how long before they know about Philadelphia?"  
  
"I imagine there are those in Philadelphia who already know about it."  
  
"Is it going to be on the news?"  
  
"Yes, but it probably won't be much of any affair. At this point I suppose they've gotten used to the idea that they're under attack with white waves of energy, and now they'll be more interested in figuring out just what it is. That and they'll report the explosions. They're more interested in those than in the waves themselves."  
  
"Do you think they'll figure out what's happening soon? People are already changing; how many people have to change before they figure it out?"  
  
"I don't know. Probably a lot; they're not going to want to believe it."  
  
Jen smiled. "No. I guess they won't."  
  
................................................  
  
He found he was too tired to be able to think multiple things at once anymore. He still felt like it was impossible for him to move and no amount of movement would convince him otherwise, at least for a day or so. It was so hard, every time he did it. He had felt himself being literally drained of energy to the point of death by exhaustion four times now. He thought that after the second or third time it would be slightly more bearable, but even after the fourth it was no better. It was still horrific, and it still brought memories of being strapped down and experimented on by Nazi "doctors" no matter how hard he fought the images. It was worse, in fact, than those experiments, because in those days often enough he had been able to find some stray piece of metal and he would use it to kill them or at least stop them from torturing him. Now the torture used his power; he had no hope of doing a thing to stop it. Nevertheless, that was not the worst part. The worst part was afterward, as he faced it again. It was as he stood in it, allowed it to grip his hands once more. He knew what awaited him but allowed it to happen anyway.  
  
Now he was sitting in a truck with his torture device and his own dead body. He looked at the old body. He had looked out of those eyes until minutes ago, had felt with those hands until minutes ago. Now it was nothing. It was not a person. It was not the symbol of a person, the remembrance of a person, since here was the person himself sitting before it. It was not even a piece of meat, since it was the body of a human and that would have been cannibalism. It was trash. Trash just like at the death camp, where such trash had stood in towering piles.  
  
He wondered whether anyone still questioned his motives. Whether Charles, the only person whose opinion mattered in the least, still questioned his motives. Was there any way to dispute it at this point, when he had already submitted himself to unimaginable torment four times for his cause? Would Charles have been able to do the same? Soft Charles, who had had such difficulty with the mean bullies thinking bad thoughts at him? Surely that had been as bad as his own time at the death camp. He closed his eyes, imagining Charles' face. There was no arguing that the man had the best interests of his little runaway mutants in mind, but he had never experienced the cold, hard reality of the outer bounds of human hatred.  
  
Now, with this talk of passing the Mutant Registration Act into law, he knew he was right in moving against the humans before his déjà vu became too complete.  
  
"I have confirmed Stryker's movements for the next two weeks," said Raven from next to him. Well, to be precise, she was between two of him.  
  
"And?"  
  
"There is no suitable target, but there is an opportunity to bring him to us if we use two or three of me and one of you."  
  
"For his metallic assistant." He had never had personal contact with her, but he looked forward to it. What better way to help him shake off his torpor than to hold a person actually made of that wonderful metal, adamantium? He still remembered his three meetings with Wolverine with fondness.  
  
"Very well. We will discuss it."  
  
"Shall we move it to the next location?"  
  
"I am not yet decided which city shall be our next."  
  
She agreed. "Best for you to get some rest."  
  
If there was one other person in the world who understood what it took to enter that machine it was Raven. She was his prize student, and in all likelihood she was the only one he would have sacrificed his life for. By comparison Jen was a spoiled brat who had lived her entire life in comfort. She had only taken part in this most recent campaign because it was fun, because it would earn her a spot on the news and her fifteen minutes of fame. Nevertheless she had been vital, and he had to admit that he did feel some sort of affection for her. Human emotions were complicated, and as much as he told himself he was not human and therefore would not have them, he did. Mutants were not so removed from humans that they could overcome that eternal folly. Eventually, perhaps. For the time it was enough that his Apparatus was working, and humans were experiencing mutation on an appreciably large scale.  
  
He was back to considering his options for the next location when a commotion disturbed him. It was Toad.  
  
"They're at the base! They've attacked us!"  
  
"Charles' students?"  
  
"Yes. They're inside now."  
  
It galled him. Charles would attack his base? Merely to take Jen? It was so unlike him to put his students at unnecessary risk. He was inclined to let them have her, just to show them that she was no longer necessary to his success. He would merely have to be careful with his last four selves. On the other hand, allowing them to have her would tell Charles that he had the right to walk in whenever he wanted and take whatever he pleased. That was not acceptable.  
  
"Toad, hold them off. Two Mystiques and the second Sabretooth are within range and will arrive shortly to clean up. Kill them only if you must."  
  
He lay back again, and looked over the Raven with him. She would enjoy the opportunity to defeat Charles' students once again. He had to wonder whether she would allow them to escape this time, especially Wolverine and Jean Grey. That night on the Statue of Liberty Wolverine had angered her in a way few have been able to do in recent years, and Jean Grey, with her flawless appearance, had long been a target of Raven's jealousy. It was understandable, really. Now it would be up to her to decide what would become of those she hated. Interesting.  
  
................................................  
  
As far as Jen was concerned it all happened very fast. One moment Toad was telling her to get down and not make any noise, and the next she was picked up by a man she immediately recognized with a kind of feeling that her blood was freezing over: Cyclops.  
  
She had screamed and kicked and clawed at his visor like she had been taught, but it was no use. There was a flash of red light and everything went black.  
  
When she woke up she was on some kind of table and she couldn't move her arms or legs. Fear grabbed and throttled her, so much that she decided she had to duplicate herself out.  
  
She told herself it wouldn't be hard, that it would be the only way for her to get out of there, but she still couldn't quite force herself to do it. She kept getting flashes of the accident, of being crushed by the car. It didn't even matter that there was no danger here, that she could duplicate, free herself, and reform. It was just too hard. That was before anyone came, though.  
  
"Good morning," said a woman's voice, and she turned to see Jean Grey entering the room. She wore a lab coat, and she was terrifying.  
  
That view was enough. She duplicated and her copy fell off the table. She leapt up and began working on the straps holding the other version of her to the table.  
  
"Hey!" called the woman behind her.  
  
She duplicated again and this time she had the copy turn toward the woman, ready to fight if necessary.  
  
"Where are you going to go?" asked Jean Grey. She didn't make any move to prevent Jen from freeing herself.  
  
"Home!"  
  
"To Magneto and the Brotherhood?"  
  
"Yes!" She took a step toward the woman threateningly, who merely stared back.  
  
Finally she was free, and she rejoined the original and the copy who had set to work freeing her. She turned both of her remaining selves to face the woman.  
  
"Look, I'm not going to attack you. I just want to talk to you."  
  
"You kidnapped me!"  
  
"If you insist we will let you go, but please listen first."  
  
That was the last thing she wanted to do. These were the X-Men, the mutant traitors. Magneto and Toad had both made it very clear that she shouldn't talk to them, especially not Xavier himself. On the plus side they were weak, and if she demanded it they would let her go. She just hoped Toad and Magneto had been right.  
  
"Please let me go."  
  
"Alright. Alright."  
  
Jen reformed and walked cautiously over to the woman, who turned and led her out of the lab. She had only made it halfway down the first hall when she heard him.  
  
"People will die," someone whispered. "Do not help them kill." She looked around but each time the whisper seemed to come from just behind her. "Those people are innocent."  
  
"Stop that!" she yelled. "I know who you are!"  
  
"Does that make me wrong?" asked the whispering voice.  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"You do not want to be a murderer."  
  
"I'm not!" Even as she said it, though, she remembered what Magneto had said when he told Mystique to let the first set of bombs go. He had all but said that people would die. Was she responsible for that?  
  
"They have been lying to you."  
  
"Why would I believe you?"  
  
"That machine is lethal."  
  
"It makes people mutants."  
  
"It kills them. Remember the news. Remember what they said on the news."  
  
"They didn't know what was happening."  
  
"But they did know that people were dying."  
  
She couldn't help but recall that first time on the news, when the woman said heart attacks, strokes, and other medical problems had become much more common. But that wasn't a lot of people; a whole lot more of them would just become mutants like they were supposed to.  
  
"People have only begun to die," said the whispering voice.  
  
"Professor?" asked Jean Grey in a surprised kind of tone. She was still walking in front of Jen.  
  
"It is a harsh truth," the whispering voice continued, "but it is a truth you must face."  
  
"I don't believe you."  
  
"You will see."  
  
"I'm leaving!"  
  
"Perhaps you should stay until you see the real results of Magneto's machine."  
  
"You can't keep me here." She poured cold hatred into her words.  
  
The whispering voices stopped. Maybe that was a good sign.  
  
"Professor, are you sure?" asked Jean Grey to the air.  
  
She was starting to really annoy Jen. She could see why Toad and Mystique didn't like the woman; she was just so perfect. She was a mutant, but it didn't even make people look at her funny much less attack her for being different. Compared to Mystique she had it all.  
  
Before she could really think it over she acted. She jumped forward, grabbed the woman's arm, and duplicated her. Then she duplicated her again, and again. And three more times. At first the woman had only thrown out her arms to steady herself, but by about the fourth copy or so she was swaying on her feet, and she passed out cold onto the floor after the sixth copy. Jen reached down and rejoined all of the unconscious Jean Greys, then stepped over the remaining form and walked to the end of the hall.  
  
When she got there she found to her disappointment that the only way out was an elevator. They would probably be able to shut that down, keep her trapped in it. She turned back and looked all around for another way out.  
  
"You will not find a way out by yourself. It you talk to me, though, I will allow you to leave." The whispering voice was back.  
  
"Ha!" She walked back to the red-headed woman in the hall. "The room I just came out of is a lab. How long will it take me to find a scalpel in there?"  
  
"Do not do this. This is not you."  
  
"What is that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Would you be able to live with it if you were to injure or kill Dr. Grey?"  
  
Jen didn't know what to say to that. The answer was no, but it wouldn't help for them to know that. She just had to get out of there, no matter what.  
  
"I am telepathic, Jen."  
  
"Crap."  
  
"I am sending someone down there to talk to you. Please do not attack her, and she will not attack you."  
  
She wondered whether Magneto realized that she wouldn't have been taken at all if he had just let her go to Philadelphia with them. 


	4. The Dying

Back to original characters (I could really call this two separate chapters if I wanted to, but why?)  
................................................  
  
The first thing he realized as he woke up was that he was in a hospital bed. The second was that Betty was in the seat next to him, and she was looking at him, her expression very serious.  
  
"Corey. How are you?"  
  
"Betty. I guess I feel pretty much okay. What...?" She looked like she had something important to say, so he stopped.  
  
"I'm sorry to spring this on you right now, but he's in critical condition."  
  
"He...? The President?"  
  
She nodded. "He was complaining of chest pain right after the energy wave, remember? Well later he got a headache, too. Then he passed out, an hour or two after you did. He's in a coma now."  
  
"Holy crap. What was it?"  
  
"They're still trying to figure it out, but based on some symptoms they're seeing in other patients it doesn't look good."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
She looked at him intently, but didn't say anything. After a few seconds he realized she was on the verge of tears.  
  
"What? How bad?"  
  
"You." She wiped away the tears and spoke the syllable more clearly. "You."  
  
"What about me?" Fear coursed throughout his body, making him tingle all over. He hadn't done anything to the President, hadn't passed anything along to him?  
  
"Look at yourself." She held out her hand. In it was a little make-up mirror.  
  
He took the mirror with unsteady hands. He held it up, and then wished he hadn't. His first thought was of a diagram of a lung blackened by lung cancer. Then he thought of leprosy, of old footage of lepers far gone into their disease. His face and neck were covered in ugly black splotches outlined in red. He dropped the mirror. The clatter it made on the ground was unsatisfying, nothing like it should have sounded at the moment: it should have been ear-shattering, heart-wrenching, horrible to listen to. That was how he felt.  
  
"You seem to be the only one with the skin condition, but many others are having heart problems and headaches, and they're saying it's all related. They're starting to think it's an epidemic, real biological weapons."  
  
He burst into tears. For the first time since he had signed with the McKenna 2008 campaign he thought of himself before the President. Who cared if Mr. President was having heart problems? HE was DYING. He looked like something out of a horror film. He was coming apart. It was fine with him if he had taken President McKenna down with him; at least he wouldn't be the only who had to suffer that way.  
  
"I'm sorry, Core."  
  
His inclination was to scream at her, to make it painfully obvious to her that she had no idea what it was like to look in a mirror and see something like that, but something stopped him. She was sitting right there in front of him, he realized, so close to him. Most likely she WOULD find out what it was like.  
  
"Why are you here? You'll be infected."  
  
"It's too late. I touched you before you hit the ground yesterday. I was there when the red spots started to show up, and when they turned black. It's far too late."  
  
"Betty?"  
  
She reached down and touched his face lightly. "But at least it doesn't hurt, right? You said it didn't hurt?"  
  
It didn't, not really. It tingled. It tingled like he had already lost all of the nerve endings. And that only terrified him more. "I don't want to die, Betty."  
  
"Me either." Her fingers started to move as if she were going to stroke his face, but then she jerked them back suddenly. "Oh God, sorry. I'm so sorry."  
  
He didn't even want to know what had happened, what her touch had done to his already destroyed face.  
  
He shifted his body slightly, trying to get comfortable.  
  
"Don't do that. Please don't do that."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Shift. Your hair..." She reached over behind his head, and then brought her hand back into his field of vision. In it was a tuft of hair. His dead hair. His hair was coming out so easily that the slightest bit of friction against the pillow was making it come out in tufts.  
  
"Leave please."  
  
"Core?"  
  
"Please. I don't want you to see me like this. I don't want you to remember me like this." Images of his mother flashed before his eyes. She had been a healthy, strong woman for a good 75 years before the cancer got to her. By the time she died she was an empty shell of a person, and the truly tragic thing was that he would always remember her like that, not as she had been all her life.  
  
"You shouldn't be alone, not at a time like this."  
  
"You're wrong. I need to be." There was silence for several seconds, and though Corey wasn't looking at her he guessed that Betty was crying. "What about the President?"  
  
When she spoke it was obvious that she was indeed crying. "There's nothing we can do for him now. I'll know as soon as he's out of the coma."  
  
"What about your job? What about Friedman? He's president now; we'll be more important to him than we've been to President McKenna."  
  
She sobbed. "Friedman is already dead; heart attack the moment the wave came through. Berrell is acting president."  
  
"Just strengthens my case."  
  
"You're right," she said through a steady flow of sobs, "He needs us. I...I should go."  
  
"Yes."  
  
She stood up and turned away from him, the kind of motion that told him she couldn't stand to look at him anymore. It hurt even though he had just finished saying that he didn't want her to see him like that, remember him like that. Seeing that broke some little part inside of him that had managed to stay together even after he discovered what had happened to him. He sobbed.  
  
Hearing him sob, she stopped but didn't turn around. "Goodbye." She left the room without even a fleeting backward glance.  
  
Now he was alone, completely alone. Her farewell echoed in his head. It was too final, far too final. She knew she would never see him again. She knew that he would be dead before it would be possible for him to see her again. He would be alone for the rest of his life, eternally alone.  
  
He didn't know what to do with himself anymore. Part of him wanted to scream, to curse at Betty and President McKenna and Acting President Berrell and the entire human race and nature and God himself. Part of him wanted to fall asleep, to pretend that nothing had ever happened, to hope that when he woke up he would find out it had been nothing but a nightmare. And part of him wanted to die, to get it over with and stop himself from wasting away down to a little nothing before he died anyway.  
  
He sat up, suddenly filled with determination. It hurt to sit up, and he could feel hair coming out, falling down his back and to the bed, but still he did it. He looked around. He had to find something to write with. He noticed the little button next to his bed, the one that would call a nurse. But he didn't want a nurse. He didn't want to talk to her, didn't want her to see him. He looked for a pen. There was one, on the counter. It was out of reach, but if he were to get off the bed he would be able to reach it. He swiveled sideways on the bed and swung his legs around to the edge. As he did he could have sworn he could feel things falling away from his skin. After pausing to shake himself off he lowered one leg slowly to the floor. He put some weight on it, then a little more. It was weak, and his ankle was very sore, but he could put enough weight on it. He stretched out, toward the pen, and because of the foot on the ground he could reach it. He tried to grasp it but his hand didn't curl tightly enough the first time. He tried again, and this time it curled a little tighter, tight enough that he could pick it up. He jerked it quickly back, fearing that he would drop it in midair. He did, but its momentum took it to the edge of the bed, where he picked it up in his other hand. He sighed and brought his leg back up onto the bed, then swiveled his body back into position. Finally he was ready. He pressed the material of his gown to his chest with the pen tip and wrote, in large, upside-down letters, "DNR." At least it was something, some kind of victory.  
  
................................................  
  
When it happened Damian had been walking around downtown instead of being in school. He had actually just gotten his first glimpse of City Hall and Will Penn when the energy wave had passed over him. He had been curious about it at first, he remembered, but he had had more important things on his mind and he had quickly forgotten about it.  
  
He had finally told his parents, finally come out of the closet. That's why he was downtown instead of at school; he couldn't face the reactions of the other students after the drama at home. Besides, his brother had undoubtedly spread it all over the school by then and they were probably all out looking for him, ready to beat the crap out of him.  
  
He remembered he was feeling particular hatred toward his parents and his brother when he saw the first sign that everything wasn't normal. It was a woman. She was screaming hysterically. It wasn't English - he hadn't understood her words - but he knew what she was saying. Someone was dead or damn near. That's how hysterical she sounded.  
  
He had watched her for a little while before feeling guilty and turning away. It had made him feel a little better, he remembered, to know that he wasn't the only one having a really crappy day.  
  
But it wasn't over by a long shot. He was walking away when he heard the noise; he had already almost forgotten about the hysterical woman. He heard a crash, a small explosion of brick and glass. He whipped his head around in time to see that a wall had been knocked out of the store the woman had come running out of. It had been knocked out from inside; there was a ton of brick and glass fragments falling all over the sidewalk and street. Then the man appeared. He came out right over the pile of rubble. He was holding his head with both hands and shaking, as if he had the mother of all headaches. He lurched sideways. He was about to crash into a section of the store wall that was still standing, so he brought one hand forward to stop himself. Where his hand hit the wall the brick shattered inward and he tripped and fell back into the store.  
  
"Shit!" yelled Damian. He had never seen anything like it.  
  
Even that wasn't the end of it. There had been a car driving by when the man had appeared, and now it stopped and the driver got out. It was a young woman. She ran over to the store and the scene of the confusion with the man, but she didn't even make it over the pile of rubble. She was picking her way through it when there was another little explosion and the woman disappeared. Damian shook his head and looked again, but she still wasn't there. He glanced over and saw that her car was still there, the driver's side door still half-open. He looked back to the store with its wrecked outer wall. The man came back into view, and this time he had a big gash on his forehead. It was probably from his fall. Either that or the most recent explosion. In any case he was lurching around still, and Damian decided it was about time to leave. He didn't know what in the hell was going on, but he didn't really want to find out. He might have gone over to try to help the guy, but after the woman disappeared...  
  
He was almost out of sight of the ruined store when he first noticed it. It was the smell, a distinct smell of burning. It was strong, also, too strong to have drifted over from the store. He looked all around but didn't see any smoke. After a few more seconds he decided that he was wrong, that he was just smelling someone's attempts at barbeque or something.  
  
As he continued to walk it became more distinct. It wasn't barbeque. It was cloth. Someone's clothes were on fire. He took another step or two, then it became extremely obvious where the smell was coming from: it was his clothes that were on fire, his pants.  
  
He stopped, dropped, and rolled just like he was taught to do, but it didn't go out. It got worse, in fact, and started to smoke a little. He rolled some more, but it still didn't go out.  
  
Now he was nervous, and didn't make him feel better when his shirtsleeves caught on fire: first the left, then the right. He beat them frantically against the ground, and the right one did go out for a second, but then it went right on burning.  
  
He stopped. He stood up. He gave himself one big shake. There was obviously something not right. He wasn't in pain. He didn't feel the heat. Sure, it looked like his clothes were on fire and it smelled like his clothes were on fire, but it had to have been a trick. He wasn't really on fire. It was a hallucination, or something.  
  
He kept walking, trying to ignore the fact that it really did look and smell like he was on fire. He told himself he was fine; he wasn't really on fire. If it did start to feel hot and it did start to hurt then he would worry, but until then there was no problem.  
  
Unfortunately, if it was a hallucination other people suffered from it also. People were definitely staring at him. One girl was pointing at him. He pretended he didn't see her.  
  
His cell phone rang. It took two rings before he figured out what the noise was. Feeling like something out of a painting by Dali he reached around, his arm still burning, and unzipped the outer pocket of his backpack and pulled out the phone.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
It was his father. "Oh thank God, Damian. Your mother isn't picking up and neither is your brother." He sounded more frantic than Damian could remember ever hearing him before.  
  
He didn't know what to think. He was still too confused by the man who had destroyed the shop, the disappearing woman, and his own burning clothes. He couldn't make sense out of what his father was saying. And, since he was already mad at his dad, this confusion didn't make him feel like being very friendly.  
  
"Damian?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Where is your brother? Go find him right now. I want to know he's safe."  
  
It occurred to Damian that his father thought he was at school. On the other hand, was it really that hard to believe that he wouldn't go to school, after what his asshole parents had told him the night before? Especially his dad. "I'm not at school right now, Dad. And I don't really give much of a crap if Ty is safe."  
  
"Damian!" He paused. "Please, please just forget about last night. This is..."  
  
"Forget about last night? Dad!"  
  
"Damn it, Damian, listen to me. We've been attacked, got it? We've been attacked by terrorists."  
  
He heard it and he understood all of the words, but he didn't get it. "What are you..."  
  
"Shut up! We've been attacked and you need to find out if Ty and your mother are alright!"  
  
"I just told you: I'm not at school."  
  
"Then get to school!" He was screaming by this point.  
  
Damian was shocked. None of it made any sense.  
  
"Damian!"  
  
"Fine!" he screamed back. "Fine, I'm going!" He took the phone away from his ear and jammed the End button.  
  
Even more people were staring at him now. He felt like screaming at all of them to leave him alone. Instead he reached around and put the phone back into his backpack pocket. He sighed and turned back toward school. There wouldn't be a bus for a little while, so it would probably take him a good twenty or thirty minutes to get back to school. And that was if they let him on the bus.  
  
A minute or two later he found himself back at the store; the front wall was still demolished, the sidewalk was still covered in rubble, and the woman was still missing. Except that now her car was also, he realized. He wondered whether she did reappear or whether some crook took advantage of the door being open and stole it.  
  
It was a minute or two after that before someone finally said something to him. It was a guy not much older than him. He started by swearing loudly, which got Damian's attention.  
  
Then he said, "You're on fire, dude!"  
  
Damian wondered whether he should explain to the guy that he already knew. He figured it wasn't worth it.  
  
"Dude, your backpack's burning!"  
  
That time he did stop and pay attention. He took off his backpack. It was in open flame, and the top had already been burned through. He threw it on the ground and opened it up, only to find that all the paper inside was burning. He grabbed as many notebooks and textbooks and as he could fit his hand around and pulled them out. That only put them in contact with his burning shirt, though, and they started to burn worse. The top notebook turned into a pile of ash before his eyes.  
  
"Here!" said someone. He looked up and found a man holding a water bottle toward him.  
  
"Thanks!" he said and opened his hands to catch it. The man threw it to him and he caught it, opened it up, and poured water over the burning pile. It didn't help much. Now everything was either burnt or wet, and either way he couldn't read it. And he had emptied it out, so he had nothing to use on his backpack.  
  
"What about you, your clothes?" asked the man who had given him the water.  
  
"Don't worry about it." What else was he supposed to say? He still didn't feel the heat from the flames.  
  
It wasn't long before his old piece-of-crap backpack was too far gone to worry about. So much for his school stuff. He pulled out the cell phone, the CD player, and the CD case, all of which were starting to melt a little from the flames. He put the cell into his pocket and kept walking in the general direction of his school.  
  
A block or two later he realized that the flames had traveled all the way up his legs to his crotch. He still didn't feel them but that was just a little too creepy, so he stopped and beat them back. It worked well enough, for once, but he still didn't feel much better; he couldn't help but notice that the flames had consumed the material of his pants to the knee on the right side and to halfway up the shin on the left side. His sleeves were shorter than before, too.  
  
He decided he would be better off running. Hopefully that way he would be to the school before all of his clothes were burned away. And there was the wind he was creating as he ran; that might help slow down the flames a little.  
  
After a few seconds he had been wrong; the wind made the flames worse, not better. Even so it would be better for him to get to school faster.  
  
He was almost to his bus stop when his phone rang again. It was loud; he had the ringer on high so he could hear it from his backpack. He had it out before the tune of the ringer had gone through once. He slowed to a walk as he answered it.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Damian, where are you?" It was his dad again. He was still screaming.  
  
"I'm on my way. I'm having some trouble, okay?"  
  
"Just...just hurry." He wasn't screaming anymore, which was nice. Unfortunately, he also sounded depressed.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. It was broken not by screams or by words at all. It was broken by sobs.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
"Your mom's on the way to the hospital. She...she's not going to make it."  
  
Damian stopped dead. "What?"  
  
"She...she wasn't breathing when I got home. I called the ambulance..."  
  
"Dad?"  
  
"She was blue. It's too late."  
  
His mom was dead? That couldn't be right. His mom was fine. She had been crying the night before, sure, but there was nothing physically wrong with her. And of course he hadn't seen her this morning, but he'd heard her. She had been in the kitchen. If he had wanted to he could have gone down and gotten her to make breakfast for him like she did for Ty. He had used the side door instead so he didn't have to face her, but he could have seen her. His dad had to have been wrong.  
  
"Damian, don't come home."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Don't come home. Just go to your brother. Make...make sure he's okay, and just stay there. You hear me?"  
  
"Yeah, I hear you. But look...Mom was just in the kitchen..."  
  
"Damian, don't come home." He left out a couple of sobs. "Bye." The phone line went silent.  
  
Now he was even more confused than before. Why would his dad tell him not to come home? Why would he have said Mom wasn't going to make it?  
  
Most of a block ahead of him the bus was just pulling in at the stop. That would be his bus. He ran for it and made it just in time.  
  
"What the hell?" said the bus driver. "Kid, you're on fire!"  
  
"And my mom just died, too. What about it?" It had gotten to be too much. Just too much.  
  
The bus driver didn't close the door, but Damian wasn't about to go anywhere. He had to get to school, to see his brother. His brother would have some idea what was going on. He would be able to explain the joke, how he made it so that Damian's clothes caught on fire, why he told Dad to tell him Mom had died and that he wasn't allowed to come home.  
  
"Go!" he yelled. It was startling enough that the bus driver closed the doors behind him. Damian walked up the steps and right past the driver without paying. People stared at him as he started down the aisle.  
  
The bus was moving now. It wouldn't be long now before he got to school.  
  
He rode the whole way standing up. Part of it was that he didn't want to burn the seats, but he also wanted to be able to get off as quickly as possible. It also allowed him to pace, which made him feel a little less overwhelmed, even if it didn't really help anything.  
  
The time the bus stopped his clothes were in burned tatters. At least they hadn't fallen off yet, though.  
  
When he finally made it to school he got a very bad feeling. It was too quiet. He went inside and the sounds of him gasping for breath echoed off the tile walls; he had run the whole way and had tired himself out, but his breathing still wasn't THAT much louder than usual.  
  
All of the classrooms had something over the little glass windows, and it wasn't long before he figured out what was happening: it was an intruder/terrorism drill. The school had a special alarm in case some student came to school with a gun or there was a terrorist attack or something, where everybody sat still in the rooms and was quiet and you turned off the lights, locked the doors, and covered the windows in the doors.  
  
It took him another couple of rooms before he had processed the information, but when he did he stopped. What if it wasn't a drill? What if there really was a terrorist attack? That's what his dad had said. He stared at the nearest door with its cheerful green window covering. Terrorists had attacked?  
  
It didn't matter, he decided, or at least he had to find his brother anyway. He looked around. Now that he thought about it, he realized he didn't know which class his brother had. He did sort of know Ty's schedule, but if he had known where all the classes were he still wouldn't have known which one he was in now; he didn't know what period it was. But he couldn't just stand there and do nothing. He ran over to the library, remembering that it had a nice big clock in it and thinking it might be open still. It wasn't. Then he remembered the sundial in the quad. It wasn't really a clock, but at least it had the numbers printed right on the ground. He ran out to the quad. There wasn't a whole lot of sun, but there was enough to make a shadow. It was about 10:20. That would make it just the beginning of third period. Still, he didn't see any groups of students winding their way to their classes. They would still all have been in their second period classes still, unless the alarm had gone off so long ago that they were still in their first period classes. But Ty didn't have a first period class, so he wouldn't have been allowed into class at all if the alarm had already gone off. So second period it was. Ty's second period was math, and his teacher was Mrs. Piani. He knew where her room was and he went there.  
  
Once he got there he found he didn't know what to do. He was still on fire, now more than ever, so he had to hurry and find a way to make it in to his brother. He didn't know how to go about doing that, so he figured he would start with the obvious approach: he knocked on the door.  
  
"Ty!" he yelled through the door, "It's Damian. Open up." He tried the door, but it was locked like he thought it would be. He waited, but so no answer came so he tried again.  
  
The door opened and Ty grabbed him and dragged him into the room. "You stupid...What the hell?" He was looking at the flames burning through Damian's shirt and pants.  
  
"You tell me."  
  
"What? Put it out!" He threw Damian to the floor of the classroom and tried to put out the flames.  
  
"It's...hey! It's no use!" He said, trying to defend himself.  
  
"What do you mean? Put it out!"  
  
"It's not burning me!"  
  
Ty kept trying to put out the flames.  
  
"I said it's not burning me!"  
  
Finally Ty backed off. His hands were red, burned.  
  
Damian was confused. He got to his feet. "What?"  
  
"That's my line. What the hell is going on?"  
  
"It burned you?"  
  
"No, it sang to me!"  
  
Damian didn't know what to say. He had seen it burn his clothes, and he had seen it burn the paper in his backpack, but he didn't guess that it would actually burn people.  
  
"Tell me what the hell is going on!" demanded Ty. Everyone in the classroom was staring.  
  
"We have to go to the hospital."  
  
Ty was getting mad now. He looked like he was going to punch Damian.  
  
"Dad called and said he went home and Mom wasn't breathing and they took her to the hospital and he said not to come back and he didn't know why you weren't answering your phone and..."  
  
"Damian, shut up!"  
  
"We have to go."  
  
"You aren't allowed to leave," said Mrs. Piani.  
  
"We have to go!" He was talking directly to Ty, ignoring the old math teacher.  
  
"We don't know what's happening out there," said Mrs. Piani. She was also talking to Ty.  
  
Ty turned back to Damian. "She's right. There were all these noises, these bangs. People were screaming. Who knows what the hell is happening out there."  
  
"I just came from there! There's nothing!" He grabbed Ty's arm.  
  
"Shit!" He jerked his arm away from Damian. "What the hell was that?" There was now a big red burn where Damian had touched his brother. He stared at his brother, and everyone else stared at him.  
  
"Well I'm going!" He left without looking back. He had gone 60 or 70 feet when the door opened and Ty came out.  
  
"Hey! Wait!"  
  
He didn't wait, but Ty caught up with him anyway.  
  
"Mom wasn't breathing?"  
  
"I don't know." Or he pretended he didn't, anyway. It was easier that way.  
  
When they got to the car Ty unlocked the doors then looked at Damian before getting in. "You're going to burn the seat."  
  
"Just drive!" He got in.  
  
"At least lean forward or something."  
  
Damian did. Ty drove.  
  
When they got to the hospital there was nowhere to park. Ty ditched the car illegally at the end of a row. They ran inside, where they found the waiting room overrun with people. Even so, Damian attracted the attention of a nurse.  
  
After some negotiation they convinced her Damian didn't need to be put out, and that they needed to see their mom. The problem was that there wasn't any record of her entering the hospital.  
  
"There's no Valerie Sayers?"  
  
"No, sorry." She was looking over the list of patients. "There's a Martin Sayers." She shrugged.  
  
"What?" demanded Ty.  
  
"You know him?"  
  
"He's our dad!"  
  
"He was admitted with the symptoms of radiation poisoning."  
  
"Where is he?" That definitely didn't sound good.  
  
"Room 418, but he..." They were already leaving. "Hey, wait!"  
  
Damian slowed down enough to listen to what she had to say.  
  
"Are you sure you're okay?"  
  
He waved her off. "Fine!" He ran and caught up with Ty.  
  
When they found him Damian, for one, almost wished they hadn't. He was unconscious. His skin had ugly red blotches over it. His hair was thinner. His whole body was thinner. He looked like a person does after fighting off a disease for a long time, like a year or more.  
  
"What are you doing here?" asked someone in scrubs, probably a doctor.  
  
"That's our dad!"  
  
"He's in no condition to be receiving visitors. Please leave."  
  
"He's our dad!" Ty was yelling at this point. Apparently he was loud enough to wake up Dad. He stirred, blinked his eyes, and looked at them.  
  
"Ty? Damian?" His voice was weak, far too weak.  
  
"Dad!"  
  
"Do you realize you're on fire?" asked the doctor of Damian.  
  
"I told you not to come home. I didn't want you to see me."  
  
"Dad..."  
  
"Where is Mom?" asked Damian.  
  
Instead of answering he closed his eyes and swallowed. He looked like he was in terrible pain.  
  
"Where is she?" pressed Ty.  
  
"She's already gone," Damian answered. He had known even before he had asked, even before they had driven to the hospital, back when Dad had told him. He just hadn't believed it. Not until now.  
  
"You have to leave," repeated the doctor. "This man has received a severe dose of radiation. He isn't safe to be around. He's going to be moved in just a moment."  
  
"Radiation. Why? How?" Ty looked back and forth from the doctor to his dad as he spoke, inviting either man to answer his questions.  
  
Finally the doctor had gotten tired of waiting. He grabbed Ty by the arm and pulled him out of the room. He was less willing to grab onto Damian.  
  
"You need to go, Damian," said his dad. "I'm just glad you boys are alright. I'm sorry if I ever hurt you." He closed his eyes again.  
  
"Dad?" He walked right up to his bedside. "Dad?" He felt tears coming to his eyes. He fought them back. "Dad?"  
  
"Come on!" That was Ty this time, from outside the room.  
  
Slowly Damian stepped away from his dad's bed. He paused briefly, turned, and walked out.  
  
Back in the waiting room, Damian and Ty weren't very talkative.  
  
"What happened to Mom?" asked Ty, breaking a silence of over a minute.  
  
"When Dad called me he said she wasn't breathing when he found her." He shrugged. "Choked, maybe."  
  
They settled into silence again. Damian, for his part, was thinking about the night before. His dad had all but kicked him out then. And now he was dying. But he had apologized. Damian hadn't. As he realized that he felt a sharp twinge of guilt; he hadn't returned the apology when his dad had apologized to him. Yes his dad had started it, and yes it wouldn't have been nearly as bad if his dad hadn't gotten mad and started insulting him, but Damian certainly hadn't been a gentleman back. And now his dad was dying and he had missed his chance to apologize.  
  
His mom wasn't any better. She hadn't been angry the way his dad had been, but she had cried. Her reaction was almost worse. And he hadn't even had a chance to see her before she died. He remembered back to that morning, an eternally long time past, to when he was thinking about how much he hated his parents and Ty. Had anything not changed since then?  
  
"Damian?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Your pants."  
  
His pants had finally burned through. If he were to stand up now they would fall away completely. He had to wonder whether God just had to add that little insult on top of taking away his mother and father. "Now what?"  
  
"We need to find a way to put out that flame, then we can go home and get more clothes."  
  
"Yeah." He hadn't been able to think of a way to put it out before, and at the moment he wasn't feeling very creative.  
  
"I think you have to put it out."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"It's coming from inside of you."  
  
It was a simple sentence, but it was incomprehensible to Damian. The fire was coming from inside of him? How could fire have been coming from inside of him? Why wouldn't he had have burned from the inside out already? Did Ty even know what he was saying?  
  
"I guess you'll just be on fire until you figure out how to put it out." 


	5. The Exodus

For my next trick: borrowed characters AND original characters!  
  
................................................  
  
Toad found he regretted that the X-Men had snatched Jen. She would have liked to have seen the news broadcast when the humans finally figured out that it had been radiation that had washed over them. It had been a beautiful thing, with the kind of panic and confusion that cannot be faked. The best part had been when they warned the good citizens of New York, Washington, and Philadelphia not to leave their respective cities for fear of killing the rest of the country and the world and then they had cut immediately to scenes of the roads out of those cities so clogged with cars that people were walking. The only part Jen wouldn't have liked was the footage of the people in the advanced stages of radiation poisoning. Those images were getting more and more frequent, and as it happened Philadelphia seemed to be keeping up on that count with its longer-affected neighbors. Of course that might or might not have had something to do with the fact that Toad had slipped and tweaked the power on the Apparatus up a bit after the jaunt to D.C. He thought it would speed up the power manifesting and he was right; it merely had a side effect of killing Philadelphians in droves. He would have turned it back down again afterward, but now it seemed as if they were finished with it for the time and if they were to use it again the increased speed would make up for the increased deaths.  
  
Of course he also regretted the loss of Jen since it earned him a trip to the Overlook for a day or two. He had never liked it in there, not because it was cold and wet so much as because it relied on Magneto's power. If the old codger had taken a blow to the head during that day or two and had forgotten how to do his trick with the magnetic fields Toad would have been stuck for a long time. It wasn't as if he had done any great misdeed, either; one of him and four X-Men were bad odds, even if he could have beaten any two of them easily. And the girl wasn't even necessary any longer; it was merely a shame that they had taken her away before she could see that newscast. He didn't suppose an old stick-up-his-ass idiot like Xavier would let his students watch such as shocking a program as that, and that was provided he was calling Jen a student. Xavier did have ample room below that mansion of his to hide a recalcitrant young mutant or two. Toad hoped she duplicated them all to death.  
  
Now it was business as usual. Probably the two most important cities in the country had ground to a halt and were getting used to the idea that they were all going to die, and it was left to the Brotherhood to show them that being a mutant was not the same as being dead. It was rather more difficult that Toad had been expecting, as a matter of fact. He had spent the last few days in D.C., talking to this or that important person, and not one of them had believed him when he said that they were mutants. One senator had had sparks periodically coming out of his hands even as Toad had spoken to him and yet the man had insisted that it was radiation poisoning and he had only hours left to live. It was pathetic, really.  
  
At the moment one of him was holding an interview with millionaire businessman Vijay Sanjor, another was speaking to Senator Catherine Zinetti (D-OH), and a third was en route to Philadelphia to check up on Mayor Patterson. Between Sanjor's attempts at striking him with a lamp and Zinetti's horrified shock he was distracted and didn't immediately understand the message aimed at the third him.  
  
"I repeat: Toad, turn off. Do not continue to Philadelphia." It was Mystique and she didn't sound pleased.  
  
"Sorry. Turning off now. Why?"  
  
"We've given up on Philadelphia. It is nothing but a ghost town. There are live targets in D.C. and New York."  
  
"D.C. again, then?"  
  
"Griffin Banko, 1420 Madison. Perhaps Washington's new mayor." The transmission cut off.  
  
The entire conversation was just like Mystique. She never gave quite enough information. She did love to have more information than everyone else; it made it difficult to work with her at times.  
  
As he got himself turned around toward D.C. he had to wonder just exactly why he had been called back from Philadelphia. It was a ghost town now, she had said. It was probably just that they had received notice that Mayor Patterson was dead. On the other hand, could it have meant that the entire city had died? Or enough of it that they no longer had reason to bother with it? Could the mutants have died also? That would be a shame. If so he would have to turn the power on the Apparatus back down just to be sure.  
  
................................................  
  
Greg had to have been the last person in the city of New York to know about the terrorist attack. He had been taking a nap when the wave had originally passed through, so he had found himself confused when his friends had all started to talk about it. And it had only gotten worse. He had been the last one of his group of friends to hear that it might have been a biological weapon and now he was the last of his group of friends to have heard that it was really radiation. Of course by then his group of friends had gotten smaller. Pollack was dead. The twins were both mysteriously gone. Vern had called to say that Noelle couldn't even hold a pencil anymore, much less a phone. Rob wasn't at home and only an e-mail auto- response saying he had spontaneously gone on vacation marked his leaving. The list went on. If he counted not-so-close friends he was near two dozen on the KIA or MIA list, and a dozen more on the critical list. His mother was doing badly enough that his father refused to talk about her. Maybe she was dead. Not that his father was the kind of man who would have hidden the truth from him just because it would hurt. That made it worse, even less understandable. And now the phones had stopped working.  
  
By the time he had gotten it together to pack and leave his apartment he knew it would have been a waste to take his car. For days it had been faster to walk. He brought his two suitcases down to the sidewalk and started walking.  
  
He hadn't been feeling too bad. Nauseous and a little twitchy, but that wasn't really that unexpected. His skin itched, which made him nervous, but it wasn't really his own health that he was worrying about. Still, he couldn't worry about the health of his friends and family either; it took too much of him. As cruel as it was, he cut off all of the people it was too painful to think about. Pollack, his parents, Noelle. He only allowed himself to think of people whose problems he hadn't heard about. His ex- girlfriend Julie, for example. Hell, she might not have been in New York anymore. He hoped she wasn't.  
  
After an hour or two he was tired of thinking about even the people who might have been perfectly fine. He tried to block the worry out of his mind entirely, but he just ended up feeling sorry for himself. Why did it have to be him? His neighborhood? Why did it have to come now? He hadn't done anything with his life. He didn't even have a girlfriend. He was carrying almost everything he owned with him in his suitcases. And maybe the worst of it was that no one even cared. If he had talked to someone else they would just have come back saying their whole family was already dead and they couldn't keep food down anymore because of the radiation. There was no time to care, no time to think about anyone but yourself. Everybody was too busy trying to save their own lives. He definitely wasn't any different.  
  
It was a few minutes later that he thought to wonder if it was such a bad thing that he didn't have a girlfriend. At this point she would have been dead or dying. Then again if everyone was dying anyway, wouldn't it be better to live out the last little bit with someone else, someone you love? He wasn't quite ready yet to accept that he was going to die. Everyone else was dying, yes, but that didn't mean he would.  
  
Less than an hour later he was forcibly reminded of his own mortality. It all happened very fast. He heard a scream and some yells, but he had no reason to believe they had anything to do with him. But then someone shot at him. He didn't see who it was or anything about them, but he felt the wind of it and heard the crack of the gunshot. It was terrifying. He dropped to the ground, telling himself that he wasn't the specific target of the shooter. Then he heard another shot and this time he could also see it; it lodged in one of his suitcases. Then he saw the man with the gun. He looked insane, and he was coming straight for Greg.  
  
"Stay the hell away from me, freak!" yelled the man, waving the gun at him.  
  
He couldn't begin to answer. None of it made any sense. He prayed the man would go away.  
  
The man stopped about twelve feet from him. "Do you think anyone would stop me from killing you right now, freak? There'd be people'd call me a hero."  
  
"Loo...look," said Greg, "I don't know who you think I am, but..."  
  
The man pointed the gun at Greg's head, so Greg scooted back suddenly and held up the closer suitcase as a shield. He heard a gunshot but didn't feel it so he jumped up and ran. He felt the suitcase buck in his hands once, but he didn't drop it. Even when he made it around a corner and out of the man's line of fire he didn't stop. He didn't stop at the next block, or the block after. He didn't stop until he tripped and skidded along the pavement on his knees. He was wheezing from the run and the pain in his knees didn't help, so he stood up and put his hands over his head, trying to regain the ability to breathe.  
  
"It's you, isn't it?" said a woman's voice behind him.  
  
There hadn't been anyone close to him when he stopped, so he whirled around, afraid. She was short and she wouldn't have caused fear at all if not for the blood all over her blouse. "Sorry," he said, backing away, "I don't know you."  
  
"Of course you don't, but I know you."  
  
"I don't think you do."  
  
"Sure I do. Here." She took a step toward him and held something out, so he backed off quickly. "Oh come on."  
  
It was a Polaroid. Gripped with a curiosity he wouldn't have thought he still had after everything he had gone through, he snatched it and backed off again. The picture was of a wall and specifically what was painted on it. It was a kind of a Wanted poster. There was a painting in white of someone at the top and below that there were red words: 'Mutant. Has Killed Over 100. Do NOT Let Him Touch You.'  
  
"So?"  
  
She chuckled. "That's you. Don't deny it."  
  
He looked at the picture again, particularly at the painting of the person. It reminded him of a picture he had drawn as a 6-year-old, a self-portrait. Still, he didn't look that much like the guy. The guy was obviously black, but that was most of the similarity. Maybe that was enough for crazy white people. He threw the picture at the woman, so of course it floated gently to the ground.  
  
"That ain' me." Now he sounded like a stereotypical uneducated black dude. That would DEFINITELY prove his case. "I don't know why you're so sure that's me, but it's not."  
  
Now she looked confused. "You're really not?"  
  
"No." He stopped for a second or two, but she certainly didn't seem dangerous, so he saw no reason not to ask a question. "Why do you want to find that guy anyway?"  
  
"We need to stick together. Nobody wants to believe they're a mutant, so they're attacking the people who prove they are."  
  
Now Greg was scared of the woman again. Was she saying she was a mutant? And what was she talking about; nobody admits they're a mutant? She was probably insane, but that didn't mean she wasn't a mutant.  
  
"You're not like that, are you?" She took a step toward him. He couldn't help but notice the huge blood stain on her blouse again.  
  
"No way. I'm not like that." He wasn't sure what he was saying he wasn't, but it didn't matter right now.  
  
"Don't worry about the blood. It's mine. That's why I'm trying to find HIM."  
  
Greg had no idea what to make of that. Suddenly she didn't seem so crazy. That was her blood? On the other hand, just because she said it was her blood didn't mean it was. He couldn't see any wounds, and that much blood doesn't come from a paper cut.  
  
When he looked at her the next time she was eyeing his suitcase. Despite the two bullet holes it still held a lot more than she had. "Why don't you come with me?" she said suddenly.  
  
"No," said Greg flatly. He turned and walked away. He was still going to find a way to get of the city, even if he did run into more people who thought he was the killer mutant guy and tried to kill him. He just had to get out.  
  
"You won't make it!" called the woman behind him. He continued to walk away. He saw a blur, and there she was in front of him. "You won't make it."  
  
He fell over backwards in his surprise. He came close to a heart attack, he was certain. "What?" It was the only word that would come out of his mouth.  
  
"I said you won't make it. They got me and that's not so easy to do anymore."  
  
He stared at her. She had done something a lot stranger than grow another head.  
  
"You haven't been up that way since the attack, have you? Let me be clear: if there is the slightest chance that you are a mutant, they will kill you."  
  
After a minute or two she got bored of waiting for him to recover from the shock and reached down to grab him. He tried to squirm away but she was much faster than he was and she had him by the arm and was pulling him up before he knew what was happening. When he was on his feet again he snatched up his remaining suitcase and started to run.  
  
"Good," he heard her call out behind him, "at least that direction you'll stay away from them. Just make sure you don't get killed for the suitcase!"  
  
He ran.  
  
................................................  
  
Jen stayed in her room all day. What else was she going to do, since they wouldn't let her leave? Play nicely with the other children? Ha. The first time she had gone down to the common room some boy had knocked her down then had pretended it was an accident. One girl had been crying at the time. "My parents. My parents are in New York. They're dying," she had sobbed. It had become obvious to Jen by then that it was time for her to leave, but even so she couldn't make it out the door before someone set fire to her hair. She hadn't seen who it was but it hardly mattered; they had ALL screamed at her as she tried to put it out. After that she had gone immediately back up to her room.  
  
The only person she had "met" who she didn't hate was Joey, and she had never seen him. He was a telepath, and he talked in her mind a lot like Xavier had. The difference was that he didn't tell her she was evil or wrong or stupid or anything. He told her that she had done a good thing. People were becoming mutants, he told her. People were also dying, which scared him, but a lot of people were becoming mutants. He told her that the newsman said that four or five people out of every hundred were already obviously mutants, and it was going up all the time. Maybe people would stop dying and would start realizing that they were mutants.  
  
It was late afternoon when she heard a knock on her door. She wondered whether it was going to be Cyclops with a lecture or some student with a baseball bat. She walked over to the door and asked through it, "Who is it?"  
  
"Joey."  
  
She was confused. He had first spoken into her mind two days before, but he had never mentioned anything about meeting her face-to-face.  
  
"I was afraid the Professor would notice if I talked to you and would watch me, but this time I have to see you."  
  
That turned her confusion into nervousness, but she opened the door anyway. Joey came in and closed the door behind him. As it turned out Joey was a little older than Jen was, but he was the same height as her. He had a determined look on his face, one that only made Jen more nervous.  
  
"Do you know what was different about Philadelphia?" he asked. He was still standing, but Jen sat back on her bed.  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
"They didn't change anything between D.C. and Philadelphia?"  
  
"I don't think so. Maybe they did. Why?"  
  
"Almost everybody in Philadelphia is dead. They're saying maybe only 2% of the population is still alive, and some of THEM are sick."  
  
"No way."  
  
"I didn't know whether it was the Brotherhood or something else."  
  
"It has to have been something else! The Apparatus doesn't kill people like that!"  
  
Joey was staring at her. He looked like he was deciding whether or not to hate her.  
  
"I just wanted to help! I just wanted to make people mutants so they would see what it's like and so they don't hate us anymore."  
  
"No you didn't. You didn't want any of that."  
  
Fear filled her up. She had forgotten that he could read her mind. It was hard to remember that kind of thing.  
  
"I don't know what to think," said Joey finally. "It's good that people are becoming mutants, but if whole cities of people are going to die...Don't go back there, Jen."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Don't go back there. There are still four Magnetos so they could still kill three cities. That's bad enough."  
  
"But..." Where was she supposed to go, if not back to the Brotherhood? She couldn't go back to her family. They all thought she was dead. And she couldn't exactly stay here, not with all of the adults lecturing and the students screaming at her and attacking her.  
  
"It's true; your family thinks you're dead. I checked." Joey was looking at her carefully now. "But that doesn't mean you have to go back to the Brotherhood."  
  
"Then where do I go?"  
  
"Stay here and we'll show everyone you're not a bad person."  
  
"No."  
  
"We can show them that Magneto used you. There's another girl, Rogue. He used her, too."  
  
"Magneto didn't USE me."  
  
"Yes he did." There was a kind of dark glint in his eyes now. "He used you and then he let you get taken. Why would he have let you alone with one Toad when he knew the Professor knew about you?"  
  
Jen didn't know how to answer that. Maybe Magneto did use her. But Toad wouldn't. Toad really did like her, and she would go back to be with him.  
  
"Couldn't Toad have protected you, if he had really tried? Couldn't he have stopped Cyclops from just picking you up and taking you away?"  
  
"Get out of here."  
  
"It won't make me any less right."  
  
"You bastard, Xavier sent you! You're trying to trick me!"  
  
Joey smiled. "If it makes you feel better to believe that then go right ahead." He turned and left without a word of goodbye.  
  
She threw herself down onto the bed. The real truth was that no one wanted her, not even Toad. She felt tears starting to come out and didn't even try to stop them. No one had wanted her ever since she had made her first duplicate. She didn't even know if anyone COULD want her anymore. The only thing she could think of was that if she left and then pretended she wasn't a mutant maybe someone would see her and want her.  
  
It sounded like as good an idea as any. Now she just had to figure out a way to get away. 


	6. The Remainders

It has been a long time since I last updated this story but I decided it's time to pick it up again. Good news: we're getting back to earlier OC's, which means we're only one step from really getting somewhere.   
................................................  
  
The streets were far too calm. This was Queens, after all. Even so Maria couldn't stop to marvel; she was too hungry. Her stomach felt like it was eating itself. It was only natural – she had hidden out in the abandoned construction site for as long as she could – but that didn't make it any easier. Actually she had been tempted not to go out even after she thought she couldn't take it anymore, but she eventually realized it wouldn't be too much longer before she was too weak to get herself to someplace where she could get food. Now she was a little sorry she had waited as long as she had; there were cars absolutely everywhere but there was no one moving around in them and she really was hungry.  
  
She managed not to see or hear anyone in the eight or nine blocks she wandered before she found the little Latin market. It was closed up but someone had already broken the lock on the door so she walked in. She expected to walk right into whoever it had been who had broken the lock but she was too hungry to be cautious.  
  
There was no one inside. She ripped open the packaging on the first thing that came to hand – beef jerky – and tore into it ravenously. After a couple of bites she decided that that was too much work to eat and went over to the little fruit section. The apple she grabbed and stuffed into her mouth tasted great even though it looked overripe. She worked most of the way through the fruit before turning back to the beef jerky and then moving to the bread section.  
  
A few minutes later she was hunched over, feeling like she was going to throw up. She had eaten far more far faster than ever before. For some reason she didn't even mind the feeling. At least she wasn't starving anymore.  
  
She was starting to consider where she ought to go next when the lights went off, as did the low refrigerator hum and the other little machine noises. She felt her way toward the door, managing to trip over a poorly placed bag of rice despite her care. She flicked all three of the light switches twice each before giving up and leaving.  
  
She hadn't decided where to go yet, so she started aimlessly down the sidewalk. After a few feet she started to smile. For the first time since the energy wave she felt peaceful. She felt happy. She even skipped a step a two, and only stopped because she felt like a total idiot.  
  
"Who's going to find out?" she whispered. The sound of it caught her off- guard. It sounded loud in the complete stillness around her. She took a deep breath and spoke again, louder. "Is this really Queens?" Then she yelled, "Helloooo?" She wasn't expecting any kind of response, so it was something of a nasty shock that she got one.  
  
"Who there?" called someone from far away, a black man by the sound of the voice.  
  
Maria felt her pulse spike up and she stood in shock for what seemed like a long time. Then she snapped out of it and felt like an idiot again. What had made her think she was the only one in the whole city? She was the only one left in all of Queens county? Not likely. It was stupid of her to feel comfortable; New York would never be completely empty of people and she would never be able to completely relax as long as there was even one person close enough that they might come up to her while she slept.  
  
She turned away from the voice and started walking. Then she realized that if the man was alone he would be looking for company, and sped up.  
  
She had rounded the corner and had gone another block or two when a thought struck her: what if being immune to the virus or whatever it was caused her to kill people who weren't immune? Would it mean that all of the survivors killed everyone they touched? A chill went up her spine. Then she thought about it a little more, and realized that if only people who were immune were still there then they wouldn't be able to affect each other. She stopped. Could it be possible? Could she touch another person again if that person was immune just like her? Just imagining it made her breathing speed up. She had spent however many days it had been believing she would never be able to touch a person or even get anywhere near them ever again. She stood, frozen to the spot. She couldn't get over the idea of being able to touch another person again, but she also couldn't get herself to actually turn around and walk back toward the man who had answered her. It was too dangerous. It was just too dangerous; if she was wrong then she would kill the only other survivor around. With so few people having survived she just wouldn't be able to bear it if another person died.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
Maria literally fell down she was so startled. The voice sounded like it was right behind her. She whipped her head around and found that it was a small white woman, very much unlike the person who had answered her call before. She was standing about 20 feet or so from Maria. Then she took a step forward.  
  
"Stop!" screamed Maria. She scrambled to her feet and backed away from the woman. "Don't come any closer!"  
  
"Calm down," said the woman, "I'm not going to hurt you." She had stopped, but Maria still didn't feel any calmer.  
  
"It's not you hurting me..." She took a step backwards, and another step.  
  
"You're not going to hurt me either. Fia told me about you; I'm not going to touch you."  
  
"What? Fia?"  
  
"A little girl, Sofia. She's telepathic. After we heard you calling she followed you with her mind and told me where you went so I could catch up with you."  
  
"You heard me calling?" Maria had no idea what to say. She wasn't really processing anything the woman was saying; she was still too scared.  
  
"Yep. Norris called back to you but it's the three of us: Norris, Sofia, and me, Katherine Derby."  
  
"The three of you are together?"  
  
"Well, okay, so we aren't quite together – Norris doesn't really like either of us and so far we've pretty much been following him around – but that will change. Like I've been saying since the troubles with people attacking mutants started, we mutants need to stick together. And now it's more a matter of us survivors sticking together."  
  
"Mutant? People attacking mutants?"  
  
"Yes. I am a mutant. So are you. Everyone who is still alive in this city is a mutant, but for a while before everybody else died or left they were attacking us. It was a combination of people being scared and needing a scapegoat and mutants like Norris accidentally killing people."  
  
"Norris accidentally killed people too?" Maria said the words very quickly, then realized what she had just said and clamped her hand over her mouth.  
  
"Don't worry; Fia told me about the people you killed and all I can say is that it's too bad but there's nothing you can do about it now. It wasn't even your fault. Just don't touch any of us and we won't touch you and you'll be fine."  
  
Just then someone rounded the corner behind the woman, Katherine, and jogged up beside her. It was a girl of about nine or ten. Sofia. She was panting. "You're too fast," she told Katherine.  
  
"Is Norris back there somewhere?" asked the woman in response.  
  
"Yeah. He doesn't feel like coming to meet her since we're here but he's not leaving either." The girl turned to Maria. "Hola. I'm Sofia."  
  
"You...know about me?"  
  
"Uh huh. When we heard you I found you." She pointed at her head. "I'm not very good at it yet, but you're so loud it wasn't hard." She paused, blinked, and continued. "But I don't mean anything bad. For all I know everybody who's scared or confused has loud thoughts and there isn't anybody left who isn't scared or confused."  
  
Maria didn't have anything to say in response to that, so she stayed silent.  
  
"Did the electricity go out where you were too?" asked Katherine.  
  
"Um, yes."  
  
"Too bad. Like I thought, the power in the whole area is finally out. And there's no one there to turn it back on again either, most likely."  
  
"No more electricity?"  
  
Katherine looked annoyed. "Just a minute. I'll be back." She turned and became a blur of motion which then disappeared around the corner.  
  
Maria gaped. "Wha...?"  
  
"She can move muy, muy rápido. Just like I can hear people thinking and Norris can make his body blow up."  
  
"You mean like explode?" Suddenly she wasn't quite as interested in meeting this guy.  
  
"Well, it's not exploding. But there's this big flash and it's really bright and everything gets thrown. It's how come everybody was after him, because he blew up right around a whole bunch of people."  
  
Maria just stared at the little girl. She seemed perfectly happy describing this scene when who knows how many people died. She had probably been just like that when she was describing Maria's power to the other two, also. She shook her head. How anyone could keep that kind of an attitude, much less a child, was beyond her.  
  
"It's not that hard, you know."  
  
"What's not?" Maria tried to remember back to something the girl could have been talking about.  
  
"It's not that hard to keep my kind of attitude. It just happens. Everybody is gone, but that's not so bad. At least they're not coming after us anymore."  
  
She just didn't understand. Even if she had seen the deaths, even if she had heard other people's thoughts about killing other people she still didn't get it. She hoped that the girl wouldn't suddenly understand it and go catatonic. She stopped, realizing that if it did happen it would be her own thoughts that would make the girl realize the truth. She guiltily stared at the wall of the building next to her.  
  
"So anyways, eres chicana, ¿no? Soy boricua."  
  
"Yeah, but I was born in New York and my English is better than my Spanish."  
  
"Oh. Where do..." The girl trailed off. She wasn't even looking at Maria anymore, but more like over her shoulder.  
  
"Are you okay?" She almost went up to the girl, but didn't. It was dangerous enough just to be talking to her.  
  
"We have to go," said Sofia, then she looked back at Maria. "Norris is getting mad again." She turned around and walked away.  
  
Maria didn't move right away. "Wait, you're going back to him because he's getting mad? This is the same guy who explodes sometimes and who is annoyed by the two of you?" The girl didn't respond anything or even slow down. Maybe she didn't hear. After another two beats Maria followed.  
  
"What you want me to do?" Norris was half-yelling when Maria got back to where he was standing with Katherine. "I ain't no electrician. It nothing I can do about it."  
  
"I'm not asking you fix the lights," responded Katherine. "I'm saying if we find a store that sells flashlights we can use up a battery a day each and it won't even matter."  
  
Norris still didn't look happy. "I don't even know why you and the little mind reader over there got to follow me around everywhere."  
  
"Uh oh," said Sofia.  
  
Maria looked over at her to figure what she was worrying about, but she quickly figured it out on her own as she heard a voice coming from a side street. "Hey, there!" Seconds later two men came around a corner and walked over to them. One was Hispanic and the other was white and she didn't especially like the looks of either of them.  
  
"Look at you all!" said the white guy. He seemed pleased to find them, but in a strangely threatening way.  
  
"Hell no," said Norris, "ain't nobody else gonna follow me around."  
  
"What's this?" said the Hispanic guy, "Why you trying to keep all the ladies to yourself?"  
  
Maria had no idea what to say to that and apparently no one else did either; silence fell on the six of them.  
  
"We're just lonely; that's all," continued the Hispanic guy. "Come on." He turned to Maria. "You want to hang out with us for a little while?"  
  
Maria stayed frozen to the spot.  
  
"It'd be fun, and it'd be a good deal, too. Money probably wouldn't be much use no more, but we do got batteries. A lot of batteries, all kinds. Can't get far without them, and we already cleaned out all the stores around here."  
  
Norris chuckled, but not in a happy or pleasant way; it was a chuckle that wouldn't have sounded out of place coming from a mob boss. "Hey Maria, maybe you should go with them."  
  
Maria whipped her head around to look at him. Did he have any idea what he was suggesting? Judging by the gleam in his eye, yes, he knew exactly what he was suggesting. He wanted her to kill them.  
  
"See, your friend agrees," said the white guy. He held out a hand and suddenly Maria felt herself being pulled toward the two men. It was not a sensation she liked; not only did she suddenly feel out of control and like she was going to fall down but she was also getting closer to the two men. She yelled, not a full scream but still charged with surprise and fear.  
  
Before she had been pulled five feet a bright light burst out somewhere to her left, distracting her. It was Norris. She closed her eyes and brought a hand up to shield her face but the flash was already over. Her whole body was tingly but it was only fear; she was fine. She breathed a sigh of relief and looked back over to the two creeps, only to find that they were lying unmoving on the ground eight or ten feet further back than where they had been.  
  
"Good," said Katherine with a tone of light speculation, "I told you you were getting better at controlling that. That was actually a pretty narrow beam that time."  
  
Maria gaped. And continued to gape.  
  
"They were dead anyway," said Katherine finally, turning to her. "You should thank him; if he hadn't done it it would have been you who'd have done it and you probably wouldn't have liked that."  
  
"Dead anyway? They had to die? Does everybody have to die?" Maria was muttering to herself rather than speaking to the other three, and she wasn't really listening to Katherine's response.  
  
"Not everybody. That's just the way some people are; they think they can do anything they want now that the normal rules are out the window."  
  
"I'm gonna see if I can find those batteries," said Sofia, and she walked over to the bodies.  
  
................................................  
  
As far as Damian was concerned Bill Hammell was pretty much a replacement Ty. He wasn't quite the same – not only was he 15 years older and white but he was also hot and that made it a little harder to see him as a brother – but in many ways he was close enough. Bill met him right as Ty was in his last hour or two, and comforted him a lot like Ty had after their parents had died. Bill had lost his wife at the same time, so it was the same kind of mutual silent support Damian and Ty had had before. It had been Bill who had suggested the meditation techniques that had allowed him to get a little bit of control over the flames that had continuously poured out of him since Ty had started showing obvious signs of having the same sickness that had killed their dad. He had also offered to give Damian a massage that would help, but the latter couldn't help but think that receiving a massage from the man would only make his body temperature rise. Even without the massage, though, he was feeling a lot better than he would have been if he had not met Bill. He wondered whether he'd have gone crazy, or be running around burning everything he could get his hands on. He still felt a little like those were both options, but at least with Bill there he wouldn't do either without some kind of big reason.  
  
"How you doing now?" asked Bill at the end of their impromptu dinner at Albertson's. It was probably the ninth time that day he had asked the question.  
  
"I don't know, better I guess; I got through that last whole bottle without melting the bottle till the very end." Usually when he tried to drink pop he ended up drinking a quarter of it then losing the rest as the bottle broke open.  
  
"That's good. You wanna stay here tonight?"  
  
"Naw, I'd still burn the place down. You can stay in and I'll find a car outside." Nobody was using the cars anymore; he could burn one or two of them out and not hurt anything.  
  
"I'll find a car too."  
  
"You don't have to."  
  
"Might as well stay together." Just a little reminder that even among the survivors Damian wasn't wanted. If anybody from the Camp found him all alone and asleep they might just figure the world would be better off without a gay black kid who can't walk down the goddamn street without burning something down.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Don't be like that. You're not thinking about the Camp again, are you?"  
  
Damian didn't bother to lie.  
  
"Well you might as well stop. It wasn't your fault and we won't go back there so it doesn't matter anymore."  
  
"Why would it matter? They only have half the supplies left in the city."  
  
Bill chuckled. "Two people don't use that much stuff. We'll get by fine."  
  
"You don't need a lot of stuff. You're not the one who burns through his f...his clothes every couple hours."  
  
"You've pretty much stopped that now, though, right? And now the rain's picked up again you can always just go outside for a few minutes."  
  
Damian smiled. "Yeah, and go back to being Steam Man."  
  
"Having steam pour off of you has to be better than having flames pour off of you, right?"  
  
He shrugged.  
  
"So what's up for tomorrow?"  
  
"Hell if I know. Find food, eat it, avoid getting attacked by those Camp assholes, get a little farther from the Camp, find food, eat it, find a place to sleep. How's that?"  
  
"I'd say that's pretty close. Once we get away from the Camp, though, is there anything is particular you want to do?"  
  
"Besides survive?" He shrugged again. "Catch the new Vin Diesel movie?"  
  
Bill laughed. "You know, we might as well. The reels will probably still be around and we have the time to spare to figure out to make it work."  
  
"Yeah, if the power decides to come back on for no reason."  
  
The man waved his objective off. "We'll figure something out. A generator or something. You think a movie theater just gives up and accepts the losses every time there's a blackout?"  
  
"Uh, yeah?"  
  
"Well whatever. Like I said, we have the time."  
  
They sat in silence for a minute or two, then Bill got to his feet. "I'm going to grab a magazine or something. Want something?"  
  
"I'll come."  
  
With flashlights drawn they found the magazine aisle and started looking through the covers. To Damian they were fascinating; not a one of them made any mention of the disaster that had wiped out the whole city and apparently other cities as well and maybe even the whole country. Of course it was only because after the disaster there was no one left to write the stories inside the city and no one to pick up the magazines from other places, but it was still unbelievable. Here was a magazine that promised an in-depth report on all the up-and-coming teen pop stars. Were they still up- and-coming? Did people still sit around gossiping about them? Maybe the funniest, though, was the Newsweek. "A New Meaning for the Term 'Gifted Program?': More Mutants in Schools Than Ever" They were way off: there was not even one mutant left in any school in Philadelphia. Of course there weren't any normal kids left either...  
  
"It's incredible, isn't it?" marveled Bill, breaking the silence.  
  
"Hell yes! Did you see the Newsweek?"  
  
Bill laughed. "Yeah. Did you see the Hollywood?"  
  
"No." Bill held up the magazine and flipped through the pages so Damian could see. It seemed the biggest single article was dedicated to Christina Aguilera's car crash and how she broke an arm and had to get laser surgery to eliminate the scar. He gaped, completely unable to comprehend the fact that the editors could spend that much of a magazine talking about such stupid crap when his whole city was dead.  
  
They kept entertained for several hours before Bill finally turned to Damian and said, "We have to get to sleep so we can use the daylight and save the flashlights."  
  
"Okay."  
  
When they got outside and found two cars that were unlocked and not too far apart. They stopped and looked at each other before getting in their respective cars.  
  
"I love you, Bill." He hadn't meant to say it, but it had come out anyway and now that it was out he was awaiting the reaction nervously.  
  
"Well, Damian, I love you too, like a son. Goodnight."  
  
"Goodnight," returned Damian dejectedly. He got in his car, put back the seat and stared at the ceiling. Bill had given him exactly the kind of answer he knew he'd get: appropriate and polite but still leaving absolutely no doubt that they could have a closer relationship. He knew Bill was straight and everything, but after all the crap that had happened he had be sort of hoping... He just couldn't believe that Bill would be that cool toward him – helping him get away from the Camp and helping him when he was burning through his food and everything – without liking him. Somehow Bill had come to think of him as a son, he had said. All he could do was hope that after a couple of weeks he would get lonely and realize that Damian was the only one left. But no, he couldn't allow himself to hope that. It wouldn't matter anyway; Bill was too strong for that. But did that mean that he was allowed to hope or not?  
  
He turned on his side and looked around the car before closing his eyes in preparation for sleep. The smoke was already getting thick; if it got any worse he'd have to open a window despite the rain. The car would be completely gutted before morning. On the bright side the chances were that no one would bug him while he slept. Not unless they were going to do so with a gun. He shook the thought out of his mind and settled himself more comfortably in his seat. 


	7. The Government

Norman noticed quite suddenly that his morning routine had changed in the last week. He used to drink two cups of coffee, eat some kind of pastry, and read the paper. Now he drank four cups of coffee and wondered whether he was doing the right thing. Every day he would add another item to his mental list of negative aspects of working for the colonel and then figure out some way to rationalize it away. Mostly that involved telling himself he was closer to governing the country than he had ever dreamed he would be or deserved to be. But either way it wasn't making him any healthier; he could feel his stomach lining starting to wear thin.  
  
His cell phone's ring, the opening measures of Taps, startled him but it was a familiar kind of surprise. He pulled it out and with a deep sigh hit the button and lifted it to his ear.  
  
"Norman, we need you here now." At least it was Ron Woo and not the colonel.  
  
"What happened now?"  
  
"He's got Montana."  
  
There was no doubt that Norman was awake now. Looking at him you would think that he had drunk far too much coffee. "Montana? All of the united militia? The colonel has them?"  
  
"Yep. That's why we need you here now."  
  
Norman was ready to leave in approximately forty seconds. As he closed the door behind he spoke back into his cell. "So he has them completely?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"How? It's unheard of! All of the militants?"  
  
"It was Bennett and the girl."  
  
"You can't be serious. The girl? He thinks he can threaten them into submission?"  
  
"Not at all. He used her to show them what we're capable of. They were impressed. And there's nothing they want more than to clean out the Cities. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that."  
  
Norman sighed again. He was driving now without really paying attention. Good thing there wasn't particularly much traffic in his neighborhood. "But are they any use? Do they have any planes or are they really just a bunch of rednecks with shotguns?"  
  
"They have eight planes and a nice little stock of explosives. The colonel just sent Mariani to tally it."  
  
"Will he..."  
  
"I already told him to give you the numbers when he's got them."  
  
"Thanks, Ron."  
  
"There's more."  
  
"Do I want to hear it?"  
  
"No, but you have to."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"The colonel wants us to hit Westchester tomorrow."  
  
"You're shitting me." That was exactly the kind of the thing colonel would order. Damn him, Norman was not going to get a wink of sleep.  
  
"Unfortunately not. Did you hear the latest numbers on Xavier?"  
  
"It was 120 last I heard."  
  
"Now it's 150. I guess they've converted into a hospital."  
  
"The colonel wants us to hit a hospital?" This morning was just getting better and better.  
  
"The only ones there are mutants and irradiated humans. We'll be doing them a favor."  
  
Norman wasn't quite so certain. It didn't do to think of the mutants as humans, of course, but it was so hard not to. He wished he had never seen Jason. It would be so much easier if he had had only the girl to think of when he thoughts about mutants. He would gladly kill her if he thought it was possible and that the colonel wouldn't have him shot.  
  
"It's going to take most of our stock right now, I was thinking, but you're the man to ask on that one."  
  
Norman brought his attention back to his conversation with Ron. "What? Oh, Westchester. Yeah, it will probably take 70% give or take of our present stocks. I'll need to know more about the offensive capabilities of the new inhabitants if you want a better estimate. I only know about Xavier's original following, nothing about this influx."  
  
He let his mind wander a moment or two, then remembered that he was driving. He looked around carefully and found that there was not one other car in sight. "Why the hell couldn't we have stayed in San Francisco?"  
  
Ron laughed. "I know what you mean. But it was an obvious target and we haven't nailed the terrorists yet. Tomorrow's mission will probably help that."  
  
"We won't know whether we've got them or not unless another there's another attack."  
  
"Can't be helped. We only have so many agents who are willing to risk radiation and mutants to infiltrate."  
  
"I know. What about the colonel's plan to use Jason?" He hated to think about it, but that was probably the only way for them to get anything done in Westchester or among the mutants at all. And they were saying that mutants weren't affected by the radiation, so it would only be whoever brought him who'd be screwed. He would only have to worry about the other mutants, not that they were anything to sneeze at.  
  
"He wants to save Jason for afterward. He thinks things will settle out after we take down Xavier and we can send Jason and the girl into the Cities to do some thorough reconnaissance." Ron chuckled. "If we're lucky she'll be killed and he'll come out okay – she's been trained to protect him with her life."  
  
"He thinks the terrorists are hiding in the Cities?"  
  
"It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? They're either mutants or they're dead. Now they have three whole cities to run around in."  
  
"What do the colonel's sources say about another attack?"  
  
"I don't think I've heard anything about it since you have. It could be anytime, anywhere. Or maybe their equipment's finished. Just don't take a vacation in Chicago or LA or any large city anytime soon."  
  
"Damn it, we have to have some way to get some information. I don't think we should hit Westchester tomorrow."  
  
"We've already tried to get information out of Xavier's group and came away with nothing. You can object but I doubt you'll change the colonel's mind."  
  
"You're right. It's going to be a long night."  
  
"Yeah. But look on the bright side: we're growing and pretty soon you'll have a whole staff of people to do your job."  
  
"Don't even say something like that; you'll jinx me."  
  
"Not getting superstitious in your old age, are you?" Ron sounded like he was in entirely too good a mood for the situation. Of course there was the issue of the Montana militias and he wasn't the one who would have to stay up all night, so Norman could understand it. That didn't make him feel any better, though.  
  
"I'll see you in thirty. Oh, last thing: is she there?"  
  
"The girl? Yeah, here and on the prowl."  
  
"Figures."  
  
................................................  
  
"Joey, come on. You can reading their frigging minds! Tell us what's going on!" Fred Villanueva and Brian Rember had been bugging him all morning to tell them what the Professor was thinking and what all of the injured people were thinking. The only problem was that he couldn't bring himself to. They were just curious kids; they had no idea what they were asking for. He absolutely wished he didn't know anywhere near what he knew, but there was no explaining that to anybody, even his best friends at the Mansion.  
  
"Go down there and ask them yourselves."  
  
"Huh?" Brian seemed confused.  
  
"Go to the library. There are a bunch of injured people there. Talk to them if you want to know."  
  
"But you know they're trying to keep us from getting close to the sick people," objected Brian.  
  
"The X-Men don't want them to hurt us," put in Fred. Then he glanced at Brian and added, "And they don't want us to freak them out any worse."  
  
"Screw you," said Brian. He felt very self-conscious of his ram-style horns and right then it was painfully obvious to Joey.  
  
"It's nothing personal."  
  
"Look," said Joey, "there are people dying out there right now. This is no time for that crap."  
  
"What do you mean there's people dying right now?" asked Brian.  
  
"What don't you understand about that?" asked Joey, getting steadily madder and madder. "Outside the Mansion, right now, there are people fighting and destroying things and every once in a while someone dies. Why the hell do you think they restricted us so much right now? They don't want us kids to be in on that."  
  
"Like what?" asked Brian. "What are their powers?"  
  
"I bet the normal humans are just as bad as the mutants," mused Fred. He was exactly right. Besides the telepaths, he always knew the most of what was going on.  
  
The back of Joey's head throbbed as if he had been hit with a large blunt object. Somebody else had just died. He put his hand to his head. Suddenly he felt the tears behind his eyes. He shook his head furiously, despite the echo ache; he would NOT cry.  
  
"What happened?" asked Fred.  
  
"Nothing."  
  
All three of them were silent.  
  
When the ache was gone and he was sure he wasn't going to cry he felt a little better. He took a couple of deep breaths and decided to find Jen, to see how she was doing and what she was thinking. He didn't know where she was so he spread his mental fingers and started to search.  
  
Jen, Jen, Jen, Jen. He was quickly drawn to whoever was thinking that, like a kind of chant. He let himself a little into the guy's mind and didn't like what he found: Jen was dead and this man was crying over her. Joey felt himself go limp. Jen was dead? He felt like his head was going to explode. He wondered if he shouldn't pull out and never enter another mind again, but he couldn't bring himself not to check. Slowly, so slowly, he moved into the man's mind. It wasn't his Jen, not Jen Carmazzi. Terrible relief flooded him. The Jen who died was this man's friend and lover, Jen Graham. She was a mutant and the devil killed her. Joey felt his fear rising just reading that thought. The devil? It was a man, no more, but he was like nothing the man, Greg, had ever seen before, and Joey found himself agreeing. The man had had this look in his eyes, absolutely insane and totally violent. Greg had been sure he could see fire in those eyes. And wherever the man looked people had died. Mutants and humans both, just dead. He would hold out his arm and they would just freeze up, scream in agony, and fall to the ground, dead. That had been exactly what had happened to Jen. Greg didn't understand why it hadn't happened to him. Part of him wished it had. The worst thing was that Joey completely understood him. Anything to end the violence. And now, now that Greg was in middle of radiation sickness, he was starting to wish more and more that the devil had killed him along with Jen.  
  
Someone shook him back to his own body. It was Brian. "Snap out of it."  
  
"What did you just find out?" asked Fred. "You looked really scared."  
  
"You shouldn't do that, you know," said Joey. "You shouldn't bring telepaths out just like you shouldn't wake up sleepwalkers. It's not quite as bad for us since we know how we got where we are but it can still be really disorienting."  
  
"Sorry. But seriously, what did you see?"  
  
"A dying man thinking about a dead woman."  
  
Both of his friends were silent. Brian, Joey knew, couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. Fred understood and was regretting pushing Joey about the information. He didn't have to be able to read their minds to know that.  
  
"Can anything be done?"  
  
"No," said Joey solemnly. "He's dying of the same thing everybody's been dying of; the Professor and everybody have pretty much given up on finding a way to stop it at this point."  
  
Some kind of blast laid Joey out on his back. It was a mental blast only but it was so strong that even Fred and Brian were looking a little woozy. He tried not to find out what it was but he couldn't help it; the emotions were just too powerful. There was an intruder in the Mansion, destroying it and killing people. Without having to check Joey knew it was the devil man Greg had come across. He felt the dying agony of two more people, students he knew.  
  
"What the hell is going on?" screamed Fred.  
  
It was enough to send Joey over the edge. He broke down sobbing. Another death, and another. He could feel it happening. The devil man was burning them from the inside out.  
  
Suddenly, in the middle of the flood of terrible feelings, Joey felt a very strong sense of relief, followed by another. The devil man had made it to the library and had just killed two people in the final stages of radiation poisoning. He not-quite-consciously found Greg again and dipped into his mind. The devil man was very close to him, only eight feet or so. He had just killed two others and now he had turned to Greg. Greg looked forward to the feeling, and was gratified to find that in fact the devil man was extending his arm to kill him. Joey pulled out as fast as he possibly could, then curled up into fetal position with his arms clenched to his knees.  
  
"We need a doctor or something!" yelled Brian.  
  
"No," said Joey. "No doctor." He couldn't lose consciousness. If he did he would only dream about it. He had to think of something, had to think of a way to help. He had to think. But what could he do?  
  
HELP ME. It was so strong, that plea. Where was it coming from? "Theona!"  
  
"What's wrong with her?" demanded Brian.  
  
"She's outside. Basketball courts." Brian was off and running before Joey could blink.  
  
Now Fred looked terrified also. "Joey, you can't let him go out there! He can't go outside now!"  
  
"But it's Theona," said Joey. If she died, Brian probably would, too, so he might as well try to help her.  
  
"But Brian isn't strong enough!"  
  
"Neither am I."  
  
"I should've gone with him." Fred looked like he might cry.  
  
"You couldn't; you're not ready to risk your life."  
  
"Shut up." Fred was angry, but he was smart enough not to take it out on Joey, so the telepath didn't bother to take it any further.  
  
"I wish I had the guts to go out there."  
  
Fred looked at him sharply. "Don't tell me that. You don't say things like that."  
  
Instead of thinking about that Joey thought about the devil man. He wondered what it would look like if he burst in on them. For some reason he felt like the devil man knew where he was, and was coming to get him. He extended his mental fingers out a little, looking for the devil man. He found the man, like he feared and expected, but rather than coming after Joey the man was going through his death throes of fear and rage. Joey pulled out and found the closest person to him, Mr. Summers. With his math teacher's thoughts open to him Joey found out that the devil man had been poisoned by one of the mutants he had killed and had just died. He also found out that the man had killed twenty or thirty people in the Mansion and had destroyed large sections of it, allowing other hostile mutants and humans to enter it. That was why Theona was outside now; some guy had knocked her right out where a wall had been. Now Mr. Summers was fighting these new intruders as fast as he could.  
  
"What's happening now?" asked Fred. "How are Brian and Theona?"  
  
Joey was afraid to look. "At least he's dead."  
  
"What?" yelled Fred.  
  
"The devil man, not Brian. The devil man's dead now."  
  
"Who?"  
  
Joey didn't answer, and instead lay down where he sat and closed his eyes. He couldn't remember ever being as tired as he was then. But he still couldn't sleep. He wondered whether it was possible for him to do anything. What about Jen? Could he do something for Jen?  
  
It took him a long time to find her mind. It normally wasn't that hard – she had the loudest thoughts of everybody around – but now there was so much raw emotion in the air it was like trying to swim through mud. When he finally did find her he couldn't believe what he discovered: she had just left the Mansion. As he lay there she was running away from the Mansion at full speed. She wasn't even paying attention to the people all around her or where she was going.  
  
"Jen!" It was already too late. She was already too far for him to be able to talk into her mind and even if he could she wouldn't stop, not now.  
  
"What happened to her?" asked Fred. He didn't really care about the answer in this case; it was just an automatic request for more information.  
  
"Nothing," was Joey's only response.  
  
Fred curled up his legs and held onto them tightly, defeated. "Tell me something," he pled.  
  
"There is nothing. There is nothing good. Anywhere. Everyone's dead. Brian and Theona are dead."  
  
"What?" yelled Fred, and although this yell was less powerful it was only because Fred didn't have any energy left, not because he was any less emotional.  
  
Joey didn't know whether they were dead or not, which probably meant that they weren't because he would have heard them before they died, but he couldn't really see how it mattered anymore. "I don't know."  
  
"Did you see it, or not?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Well look!"  
  
"I can't find them. Too much going on right now." Joey knew it was true even though he hadn't checked.  
  
Fred started to cry. Joey had never heard seen him cry before.  
  
................................................  
  
"Stryker has become a true problem, hasn't he?" said Magneto.  
  
"Shall we move before he attacks Xavier or after?" asked Mystique.  
  
"Before. Tonight. Are you prepared?"  
  
"Three of me, ready to move."  
  
"And one of me. Let us show him how poorly thought out his little plans really were."  
  
Mystique smiled, very much looking forward to it.  
  
"Remember to leave the boy and his assistant to me."  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Charles is going to owe us a favor." 


	8. The Calm

Jen found herself liking Oakley less and less every hour. He had seemed fine last night, when he had picked her up off the ground and had offered to stick with her, but now he was started to starting to seem downright creepy. Part of it was the way he would look at her every once in a while. It wasn't that he was staring at her body – more like he was seeing right through her skin to her insides. It was a very deep look. The other part of it was how he always talked a little down to her. He always made it seem like he had a better understanding of everything than she did. But he didn't. The only problem was that it wouldn't be easy to leave him right then. They were surrounded by people running away from New York. It was completely chaotic; often out of nowhere they would see something impossible like a man freezing a whole car over with ice. Then they would go back to walking as if it had been nothing. Even her days with the Brotherhood hadn't gotten her used to things like that.

"Where are we going again?" asked Jen.

"West," answered Oakley smugly.

"But where?"

"Far enough that we won't be running into these crazies from the City anymore. After that it doesn't really matter so we might as well go somewhere the terrorists won't bother with. Iowa?"

"I…does it have to be west?"

"That's where we're headed now. Do you have somewhere you'd rather go?"

"Well my parents live in New Hampshire, but…" She trailed off. She wasn't even sure whether she should have said anything. She was almost definitely not welcome there anymore.

"But that would be a hell of a long way and they aren't exactly running regular flights these days."

"Well…" She stopped. She might as well leave it at that, since it allowed her to avoid the issue of her parents.

"So your parents made it? What were you doing in New York by yourself?"

"I…" What could she say? She couldn't say it was because she was a mutant, which meant she couldn't say she had run away. Or maybe she could if she could think of some other reason why she might have run away. "I ran away. I...was raped."

He looked shocked, but creepily, as if he were more surprised that she would say so than that it happened. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, anyway…"

"In that case I guess it's too bad your parents made it," mused Oakley, with an odd little smile. She didn't know how to read it.

"I guess."

"My parents didn't make it. Neither did my sister or any of my friends." He stared off into space, remembering something.

"Sorry."

He shrugged. "I just don't know why I did make it, you know? It seems like a lot of the people who did make it had really weird sh…stuff happen to them, but that's not me. I don't get it."

Jen was silent. She didn't want to know what would happen if he did find out she was as much a freak as the rest of them.

"The way I figure this will all be over real soon. That's the way the world works; there can be some huge catastrophe and the survivors will just mop up and keep going. I don't know what the government is like now that D.C. has been trashed but I bet anything somebody has already set up a government somewhere else. I'll bet you by tomorrow we'll be getting into the area where people are pretty much living exactly the way they were before, like nothing's changed at all." He paused, then chuckled. "I bet the biggest change will be that their TV reception will be shot to sh…hell."

She thought about her father sitting on the couch, complaining that he couldn't see the baseball game. The image made her laugh for some reason.

"What's so funny? It's probably true."

"No, you're probably right. I was just thinking about my dad trying…" she stopped. She wondered how long it had been since she had actually thought about her family. She had, of course, but only to extent that 'her family' would think this or do that. She hadn't pictured her mother or father or sister; she hadn't really thought about any of them. She suddenly imagined her sister watching the news about everything that had happened in New York and the other places and gossiping about it with her friends. It annoyed her just to think about it, but it also made her a lot more homesick than she would have cared to admit. What would they think if they had any idea of her involvement in all of it? But no, they didn't know and they never would. They thought she was dead.

"We might as well stop for a rest," said Oakley. "We're away from the worst of the madness now."

"What do you think happened to everyone back there? At that place where we met, I mean?"

"Back where everyone was fighting? I would imagine a lot of the crazies killed each other off and the rest turned and run farther away from the City, like the ones we've been seeing."

"Do you think they made it inside that mansion? It did look pretty messed up."

"Yeah, I figure they did. But if whoever lived in it had any sense then they were already gone anyway. It's probably overrun with those fighting bastards now. Why? Did you want to see a place that nice? Because if we looked around here I'm sure we could find one and with everybody still running around it could easily be empty."

"No, it's not that important." It was really just curiosity; she liked the idea of those jerks from the Mansion getting beat up by her new mutants. Of course, there was a difference between being taught a lesson and being killed…She would feel really bad if Joey died, for example. He had to have been the nicest person there. When she came down to it she would rather have been traveling with him, not Oakley, even if he had been a jerk to her that one time.

"What's the first thing you're going to do when we get back to civilization?" asked Oakley suddenly.

"Uh…"

"Because I'm going to A&W's and I'm going to get a big burger and an even bigger root beer float. That's what civilization is all about."

"Oh. A root beer float sounds good. I don't think I have any money…"

"Who cares? The national economy has to be in the sh…can't be doing too well. We'll figure something out."

"Do you know how we can make some money?"

"Well, I'm college-educated so it shouldn't be that hard. At first we have to do menial stuff like washing dishes, but there's going to be a vacuum of skilled workers pretty soon so I'll just step in somewhere then."

"Oh. Do you think it would be possible for me to back to school?"

"What grade did you get to?"

"Eighth."

"No problem. Schools will probably be overcrowded, but that works for you too; they aren't going to go checking that carefully to see who your parents are. If you want I'll sign all your sh…uh…paperwork and stuff for you."

"Thanks." If Oakley was right then what she and the Brotherhood did would help her after all; she could say her parents died in New York and no one would be able to prove her wrong! Somebody was bound to adopt her then, because they would feel sorry for her.

They continued to walk, while Jen day-dreamed about her new adoptive family and how wonderful they would be.

…………………………………………

When Norman first woke up he was very disoriented. The first thing he noticed was that he wasn't in his bed. Then he found that he was in a hospital bed instead. Following that discovery he traced his hands up and down his body for damage, which led him to the discovery that his right leg was badly broken. That in turn caused him to remember what had happened the night before, when they were attacked. After a few moments' thought he came to the conclusion that he was lucky to have come away with only a broken leg. He had found out that the colonel was dead less than a minute before the explosions started and he had to run for his life.

Colonel Stryker was dead. It didn't seem possible. In a way it was a relief, though he also regretted the death of a man with such a powerful vision. Of course, there was no reason that his vision couldn't live on. In fact, Norman suspected he was the highest surviving official in the colonel's government. Wouldn't that make him a kind of President, then? Or would the colonel's carefully collected strings of power have been cut at the moment of his death? Something told him the fact that he was wondering this made it true.

Of course, if no other good came from the attack then at least the girl was dead. He hadn't seen her die but it was just short of impossible that she would have allowed Stryker to be killed while she was still alive. On the other hand she was a mutant, and who knew what was floating around the head of a mutant? She could have been in on the plan, for all he knew. Well, he would use whatever power he still possessed to kill her if she was alive. And he had reason, too: if she was alive it was because she was a traitor to Stryker and the new order, and there was no way to let her live with all the sensitive information she had.

He looked around, suddenly desperate for his cell phone. His clothes weren't in sight, but he saw a little closet against the wall near the door. He took a deep breath and swung his legs down from his bed. Keeping his right leg an inch or so off the ground, he stood up.

By the time he got to the closet he had expended so much energy that he couldn't quite get over the fact that neither his briefcase nor his pants were inside. Slightly dazed, he hopped to the door, and opened it.

The pay phone was only two rooms away, to his relief. When he got to it he patted where his pockets would have been, sighed, and dialed the first collect number that came into his head.

There was no answer at Ron Woo's number. So he tried his assistant, Kimball. No answer. He tried three or four other numbers. Nothing.

Were they all dead? It was one thing to wonder whether he was the only one of high rank left and another to get confirmation that everyone else was dead.

Then a nurse appeared from around the corner, stopped to stare at him for a second, then called to him. "Sir, you shouldn't be out of bed yet."

He had seen her already, but he was too busy feeling sorry for himself to really pay attention to her. That's why he was so startled when she walked up to him and took the phone receiver out of his hand.

"Please, sir, you should rest some more." She slung his arm over her shoulder and helped him walked back to his room. He had to admit that it was much easier to walk that way.

When they were inside the room she bent close to him and whispered, "Besides, they're all gone. I've taken the time to find everyone. It's you and two others, both in critical condition."

"Who are you?" She had his full attention now, but he still couldn't figure out who she was. As far as he knew they hadn't had any nurses high enough in the organization to know their identities.

"I was working directly under the Colonel, a field worker. I was in the field when the attack came, which is the reason I am alive now. My partners were not so lucky."

"How many were you?" In a way he felt betrayed that the Colonel would have men under him with full disclosure that the others didn't even know existed, but he supposed that was the prerogative of the man in charge of a budding government. He certainly was correct to be paranoid. Had been, rather.

"Just three. One of them was holding a conference with the Colonel at the time of the attacks and was killed, and the other is dead of radiation poisoning."

He felt yet another surge in his belly, one of the surges that meant he was getting ever-closer to an ulcer. So this woman was one of those agents they always referred to. The ones who risked life and limb and no one ever cared about because they didn't have faces. His plan for attacking Westchester had involved one of these people to go in, possibly at the risk of his or her own life. He wondered if this woman would have been the one.

"Just rest now, sir." Norman abruptly noticed he was lying down again. "And I have news for you."

"Thank you." He felt like if he could get a handle on what was going on he would feel better.

"The governor of California has officially given up his attempts to assume the presidency. On a related note, the population of California is down 12, all from emigration. It would be in our best interest to secure it now."

"Secure California? Just you and me, by ourselves?"

"Yes. And with the new staff we will have to hire."

"You'll have to do the legwork." The constant ache in his leg was the only thing that prevented him from forgetting about that it was broken; he was very intent on this woman.

"Of course. Though you realize, that leg will probably help us in the end. Veterans are always popular, especially during wartime. With that leg, you have proof that you are a veteran of the Mutant Wars."

Chills ran down his spine. "What a campaign that will be."

The nurse nodded. "It has also bought us some sympathy with the EU. Prime Minister Beckworth is still attempting to annex us, but most of the continent has offered its support to us. As I see it, we need to take their financial support now and take their people once we have some people of are own again."

"We wouldn't want our organization made up of all their people."

"I can resecure Montana today."

"Good to hear it."

"What do you want to do about Simson?"

"He's in Ohio?"

"Yes. He's using this attack to bolster support in what remains of the eastern states."

"How big as Ohio gotten now?"

"It has grown by 8 and has not stopped."

"We should secure the west first."

"I agree."

"Then we need to address Simson."

"And if I had an opportunity to…set back his campaign?"

"In what way?"

"I have a means of damaging his reputation."

"What do you have?"

"He's a mutant."

Norman shot up in bed, sending spears of pain through his leg. "The bastard!"

"Rest now. And yes, I agree."

"Absolutely! Do what you have to! Sink the bastard!"

She stood up, and smiled. It was a slightly malicious smile. Norman thought he liked the look of it. She turned to leave.

"Wait! What is your name?"

"I apologize," she said, turning back around. "My name is Elena Corman."

"Would you like to be my vice president, Ms. Corman?"

She gave her beautiful smile again. "Absolutely." She walked out of the room.

He leaned back into his bed, sighing. Maybe she would be better in a position other than vice president. Maybe the best position for her would be that of first lady. He laughed at his own thoughts, sighed, and closed his eyes.


End file.
